Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and | Despised with Jesus, sorrowful and lonely, through sinning, He shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed : Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ. FREDERIC W. H. MYERS. THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. Yet calmly looking upward in its strife. In meek obedience to the heavenly Teacher, Thy weary soul can find its only peace; Seeking no aid from any human creature, Looking to God alone for his release. And he will come in his own time and power THY night is dark; behold, the shade was deeper And the bright morning yet will break for thee. In the old garden of Gethsemane, When that calm voice awoke the weary sleeper: "Couldst thou not watch one hour alone with me?" O thou, so weary of thy self-denials! To count all earthly things a gainful loss? What if thou always suffer tribulation, But here we all must suffer, walking lonely This one dark hour, before the eternal dawn. The captive's oar may pause upon the galley, Thou must walk on, however man upbraid thee, Heed not the images forever thronging Canst thou forget thy Christian supersciption, Poor, wandering soul! I know that thou art seeking O, that thy faithless soul, one great hour only, Would comprehend the Christian's perfect life; او Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, In looking And thinking eyes on the happy Autumn fields, on the days that are no more. They turned to the Earth, but she frowns on her child; They turned to the Sea, and he smiled as of old : Sweeten was the peril of the breakers white and wild, Sweeter Than the land, with its bondage and gold! POEMS OF NATURE. WORLDLINESS. THE World is too much with us; late and soon, This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A lover of the meadows, and the woods, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.. NATURE. THE bubbling brook doth leap when I come by, TINTERN ABBEY. JONES VERY. I HAVE learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power When we perceive the light that breaks through | Press to one center still, the general good. What exultation is ours! We the discovery See life dissolving vegetate again : have made, All forms that perish other forms supply Yet is the meaning the same as when Adam lived (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die); sinless in Eden, Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, Only long hidden it slept, and now again is They rise, they break, and to that sea return. revealed. Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole; Man unconsciously uses figures of speech every One all-extending, all-preserving Soul moment, Connects each being, greatest with the least; Little dreaming the cause why to such terms Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast; he is prone, All served, all serving; nothing stands alone; Little dreaming that everything here has its own The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown. correspondence Folded within its form, as in the body the soul. Gleams of the mystery fall on us still, though much is forgotten, Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good, And through our commonest speech illumine Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. Thus doth the lordly sun shine forth a type of Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat? God-head; Loves of his own and raptures swell the note. Wisdom and love the beams that stream on a The bounding steed you pompously bestride darkened world. Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. Thus do the sparkling waters flow, giving joy to Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain? the desert, The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. And the fountain of life opens itself to the Thine the full harvest of the golden year? thirst. Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer : Thus doth the word of God distill like the rain The hog that plows not, nor obeys thy call, and the dew-drops ; Lives on the labors of this lord of all. Thus doth the warm wind breathe like to the spirit of God; Know, Nature's children all divide her care ; The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear. And the green grass and the flowers are signs of While man exclaims, "See all things for my use!" the regeneration. O thou Spirit of Truth, visit our minds once more; Give us to read in letters of light the language celestial, Written all over the earth, written all over the the sky, Thus may we bring our hearts once more to know our Creator, Seeing in all things around, types of the Infi nite Mind. CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH. NATURE'S CHAIN. FROM "THE ESSAY ON MAN.” "See man for mine!" replies a pampered goose: Grant that the powerful still the weak control; Look round our world; behold the chain of love Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, Combining all below and all above, See plastic nature working to this end, And, till he ends the being, makes it blest; ALEXANDER POPE. |