Two ways alone his roving eye For aye may onward go, Or in the azure deep on high, Or darksome mere below. O blest restraint! more blessed range! Too soon the happy child His nook of homely thought will change For life's seducing wild. Too soon his alter'd day dreams shew While of his narrowing heart each year, Less keenly, through his grosser ear, By our own niggard rule we try The hope to suppliants given; We mete out love, as if our eye Saw to the end of heaven. Yes, ransom'd sinner! wouldst thou know How often to forgive, How dearly to embrace thy foe, Look where thou hop'st to live: When thou hast told those isles of light, Then in their solemn pageant learn Their Lord resign'd them all, to earn LXXIII, TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself. Philippians iii. 21. RED o'er the forest glows the setting sun, The line of yellow light dies fast away That crown'd the eastern copse: and chill and dun Now the tir'd hunter winds a parting note, How like decaying life they seem to glide! Is all their portion, and they ask no more. Soon o'er their heads blithe April airs shall sing, A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold, The green buds glisten in the dews of Spring, And all be vernal rapture as of old. Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie, No thought of them; in all the bounteous sky Man's portion is to die and rise again— Yet he complains, while these unmurmuring part With their sweet lives, as pure from sin and stain, As his when Eden held his virgin heart. And haply half unblam'd his murmuring voice For dreary were this earth, if earth were all, Though brighten'd oft by dear affection's kiss ; Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall? But catch a gleam beyond it, and 'tis bliss. Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart, O'er wave or field; yet breezes laugh to scorn Our puny speed, and birds, and clouds in heaven, And fish, like living shafts that pierce the main, And stars that shoot through freezing air at even --Who but would follow, might he break his chain? And thou shalt break it soon; the groveling worm When from the grave He sprung at dawn of morn, But first, by many a stern and fiery blast The world's rude furnace must thy blood refine, And many a gale of keenest woe be pass'd, Till every pulse beat true to airs divine, |