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CXX.

AMBITION.

AN is permitted much
To scan and learn

In Nature's frame;

Till he well-nigh can tame

Brute mischiefs, and can touch
Invisible things, and turn

All warring ills to purposes of good.
Thus as a god below,
He can control,

And harmonize what seems amiss to flow
As severed from the whole

And dimly understood.

But o'er the elements

One Hand alone,

One Hand has sway.
What influence day by day
In straiter belts prevents
The impious Ocean, thrown
Alternate o'er the ever-sounding shore?

Or who has eye to trace

How the Plague came?

Forerun the doublings of the Tempest's race?
Or the Air's weight and flame
On a set scale explore?

Thus God has willed

That man, when fully skilled,
Still gropes in twilight dim;
Encompassed all his hours

By fearfullest powers
Inflexible to him;

That so he may discern

His feebleness,

And e'en for earth's success

To Him in wisdom turn,

Who holds for us the Keys of either home,
Earth and the world to come.

CXXI.

J. H. Newman.

THE CHILDREN'S HEAVEN.

HE infant lies in blessed ease
Upon his mother's breast;

No storm, no dark, the baby sees
Grow in his heaven of rest.

His moon and stars, his mother's eyes;
His air, his mother's breath;

His earth her lap-and there he lies,
Fearless of growth and death.

And yet the winds that wander there
Are full of sighs and fears;

The dew slow-falling through that air-
It is the dew of tears.

Her smile would win no smile again,

If the baby saw the things

That rise and ache across her brain,
The while she sweetly sings.

Alas, my child! Thy heavenly home
Hath sorrows not a few!

Lo! clouds and vapours build its dome,
Instead of starry blue.

Thy faith in us is faith in vain—

We are not what we seem.

O dreary day, O cruel pain,

That wakes thee from thy dream!

204

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.

Dream on, my babe, and have no care;
Half-knowledge brings the grief:
Thou art as safe as if we were

As good as thy belief.

There is a better heaven than this
On which thou gazest now;
A truer love than in that kiss;
A peace beyond that brow.

We all are babes upon His breast
Who is our Father dear;

No storm invades that heaven of rest;
No dark, no doubt, no fear.

Its mists are clouds of stars, inwove
In motions without strife;

Its winds, the goings of His love;
Its dew, the dew of life.

We lift our hearts unto Thy heart
Our eyes unto Thine eye;

In whose great light the clouds depart
From off our children's sky.

Thou lovest-and our babes are blest,

Poor though our love may be ;

Thou in Thyself art all at rest

And we and they in Thee.

CXXII.

G. Mac Donald.

"ON THE LATE MASSACRE* IN PIEDMONT.'

VENGE, oh Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,

*The late Massacre. Organised by the Duke of Savoy in 1655. Those who escaped fled to the mountains of Piedmont and applied to Cromwell for relief.

Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundred-fold, who, having learned Thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

J. Milton.

CXXIII.

TO THE DAISY.

RIGHT Flower! whose home is everywhere,
Bold in maternal Nature's care,

And, all the long year through, the heir
Of joy or sorrow,

Methinks that there abides in thee

Some concord with humanity,

Given to no other flower I see
The forest thorough!

Is it that Man is soon deprest?

A thoughtless Thing! 'who, once unblest,
Does little on his memory rest,

Or on his reason,

And Thou wouldst teach him how to find

A shelter under every wind

A hope for times that are unkind
And every season?

Thou wander'st the wide world about,
Unchecked by pride or scrupulous doubt,
With friends to greet thee, or without,
Yet pleased and willing;

Meek, yielding to the occasion's call,
And all things suffering from all,
Thy function apostolical

In peace fulfilling.

W. Wordsworth.

CXXIV.

TO A DECEASED SISTER.

THINK of thee, my sister,

In my sad and lonely hours,
And the thought of thee comes o'er me
Like the breath of morning flowers.

Like music that enchants the ear,
Like sights that bless the eye,
Like the verdure of the meadow,—
The azure of the sky,—

Like rainbow in the evening,

Like blossom on the tree,

Is the thought of thee, dear Charlotte,—
Is the tender thought of thee.

I think on thee, my sister,

I think on thee at even,

When I see the first and fairest star
Steal peaceful out of heaven.

I hear thy sweet and touching voice
In each soft breeze that blows,
Whether it waft red autumn leaf,
Or fan the summer rose.
'Mid the waste of yon lone heath,
By this desert moaning sea,
I mourn for thee, my Charlotte,
And shall ever mourn for thee.

7. Moultrie.

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