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THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.

"Lord, why is this?" I trembling cried,

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Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?' "Tis in this way," the Lord replied,

"I answer prayer for grace and faith.

“These inward trials I employ,

From self and pride to set thee free!
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may'st seek thy ALL in ME.”

NEWTON.

The Second Coming of Christ.

E'EN thus amidst thy pride and luxury,

O Earth, shall that last coming burst on thee;
That secret coming of the Son of Man,
When all the cherub-thronging clouds shall shine,
Irradiate with his bright advancing shrine;
When that great husbandman shall wave his fan
Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away.
Still to the noontide of that nightless day,
Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain
Along the busy mart and crowded street,
The buyer and the seller still shall meet,
And marriage-feasts begin their jocund strain.

;

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THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.

Still to the pouring out the cup of woe;
Till earth, a drunkard reeling to and fro,

And mountains, molten by his burning feet, And heaven his presence own, all red with furnace heat.

The hundred-gated cities then,

The towers, and temples, named of men
Eternal, and the thrones of kings,
The gilded summer-palaces,

The courtly bowers of love and ease,
Where still the bird of pleasure sings-
Ask ye the destiny of them?

Go, gaze on fall'n Jerusalem!

Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll,

'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurl'd, The skies are shrivell'd like a burning scroll, And one vast common doom ensepulchres the world.

O who shall then survive?

O who shall stand and live?

When all that hath been is no more:

When, for the round earth hung in air
With all its constellations fair,

In the sky's azure canopy,

When, for the breathing earth and sparkling sea, Is but a fiery deluge without shore,

THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.

Heaving along the abyss profound and dark,
A fiery deluge, and without an ark!

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Lord of all power! when Thou art there alone On thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne,

That in its high meridian noon

Needs not the perish'd sun nor moon ;
When thou art there in thy presiding state,
Wide-sceptred monarch o'er the realm of doom;
When from the sea-depths, from earth's darkest
womb,

The dead of all the ages round thee wait:
And when the tribes of wickedness are strown,
Like forest-leaves in th' autumn of thine ire;
Faithful and True! thou still wilt save thine own!
The saints shall dwell within the unharming fire,
Each white robe spotless, blooming every palm.
E'en safe as we, by this still fountain's side,
So shall the Church, thy bright and mystic Bride,
Sit on the stormy gulf, a halcyon bird of calm.
Yes, mid yon angry and destroying signs,
O'er us the rainbow of thy mercy shines :
We hail, we bless the covenant of its beam.
Almighty to avenge, almightiest to redeein!
MILMAN.

Daffodils.

FAIR daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon: As yet the early rising sun Has not attain'd his noon :

Stay, stay,

Until the hastening day
Has run

But to the even-song ;
And having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along!

We have short time to stay as you ;
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing :
We die

As your hours do; and dry

Away

Like to the summer's rain,

Or, as the pearls of morning dew

Ne'er to be found again.

HERRICK.

Stanzas.

WHEN Hope, in possession's proud noon riding high, Sets quench'd in eternal eclipse,

And like fruits of Asphaltus, the pleasures we try, Turn ashes and dust on the lips;

When the joys we have nursed into bitterness burst,
And the forms we have follow'd are fled,

O where shall we find a repose for the mind
That dwells with the wreck'd and the dead?

O why was Youth's pathway so gallantly strewn
With flowers of each perfume and hue,
If their beauty and fragrance must waste in the noon,
Where fresh in the morning they grew?

O why is the scene of existence serene,

As to Ardour's young eye it appears,

If its sunshine be warm but to nurture the storm That bursts into ruin and tears?

Nay, murmur not, mortal, the fraud is thine own! Who bade thee a shadow adore ?

Earth's blessings were given for thy comfort alone, Thy hopes and affections for more.

Then turn thee from earth to the rights of thy birth-
To the armies of glory on high,

And seek above those the unbroken repose,
The garland that never will die.

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