LX. 1. 4. "Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes!
See a long race thy spacious courts adorn;
See future sons and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate
kings,
And heaped with products of Saba'an springs! 5. "For thee, Idumæa's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See Heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver born;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts: the Light Himself shall
shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains;-
Thy realm forever lasts, thy own MESSIAH
reigns!"
IV. Verse 3.--Meaning of "perplexed," here ?-What figure of speech ?-- Crested basilisk," or hooded basilisk, a reptile of the lizard tribe.-V. 4. "Imperial Salem," used for Jerusalem, or Zion, and here personified as Christ's Church, that should arise upon its ruins. The imagery is taken from the walls, gates, and temple of the "Holy City."-V. 5. “Idumæa,” or Edom, the region between Palestine and Egypt.-"Ophir," the region from which the fleet of Solomon brought gold and precious stones." Cynthia," the moon.-" Light Himself," the Messiah.
CHAPTER XII.-MISCELLANEOUS.
There was a poor old man
Who sat and listened to the raging sea,
And heard it thunder, lunging at the cliffs
As like to tear them down. He lay at night;
And, "Lord have mercy on the lads," said he,
"That sailed at noon, though they be none of mine.
For when the gale gets up, and when the wind
Flings at the window, when it beats the roof,
And lulls, and stops, and rouses up again,
And cuts the crest clean off the plunging wave,
And scatters it like feathers up the field,
Why, then I think of my two lads,―my lads
That would have worked and never let me want,
And never let me take the parish pay.
No, none of mine; my lads were drowned at sea-
My two-before the most of these were born.
"I know how sharp that cuts, since my poor wife Walked up and down, and still walked up and down, And I walked after, and one could not hear
A word the other said, for wind and sea
That raged and beat and thundered in the night,—
The awfullest, the longest, lightest night
That ever parent had to spend,—a moon
That shone like daylight on the breaking wave.
Ah me! and other men have lost their lads,
And other women wiped their poor dead mouths,
And got them home and dried them in the house,
And seen the drift-wood lie along the coast,
That was a tiny boat but one day back,
And seen, next tide, the neighbors gather it
To lay it on their fires.
And able-bodied,-loved my work: but now
I am a useless hull: 'tis time I sunk;
I am in all men's way; I trouble them;
I am a trouble to myself: but yet
I feel for mariners of stormy nights,
And feel for wives that watch ashore. Ay, ay!
If I had learning I would pray the Lord
To bring them in: but I'm no scholar, no;
Book-learning is a world too hard for me:
But I make bold to say, 'O Lord, good Lord,
I am a broken-down poor man, a fool
To speak to thee: but in the Book 'tis writ,
As oft I've heard from others that can read,
How, when thou camest, thou didst love the sea,
And live with fisher folk, whereby 'tis sure
Thou knowest all the peril they go through,
And all their trouble.
"As for me, good Lord,
I have no boat; I am too old, too old;
My lads are drowned; I buried my poor wife; My little lasses died so long ago
That mostly I forget what they were like.
Thou knowest, Lord; they were such little ones I know they went to thee, but I forget
Their faces, though I missed them sore.
I was a strong man; I have drawn good food
And made good money out of thy great sea:
But yet I cried for them at nights; and now,
Although I be so old, I miss my lads,
And there be many folks this stormy night
Heavy with fear for theirs. Merciful Lord,
Comfort them; save their honest boys, their pride,
And let them hear next ebb the blessedest,
Blest sound, the boat-keels grating on the sand.
"I cannot pray with finer words: I know
Nothing; I have no learning, cannot learn,-
Too old, too old. They say I want for nought,
I have the parish pay: but I am dull
Of hearing, and the fire scarce warms me through.
God save me,-I have been a sinful man,—
And save the lives of them that still can work,
For they are good to me; ay, good to me.
But, Lord, I am a trouble: and I sit,
And I am lonesome, and the nights are few
That any think to come and draw a chair,
And sit in my poor place and talk awhile.
Why should they come, forsooth? Only the wind
'Knocks at my door. O, long and loud it knocks,—
The only thing God made that has a mind
To enter in.'"
Yea, thus the old man spake: These were the last words of his aged mouth : But One did knock. One came to sup with him, That humble weak old man; knocked at his door In the rough pauses of the laboring wind.
I tell you that One knocked while it was dark,
Save where their foaming passion had made white
Those livid seething billows. What he said,
In that poor place where he did talk awhile,
I cannot tell but this I am assured,
That when the neighbors came the morrow morn,
What time the wind had bated, and the sun
Shone on the old man's floor, they saw the smile
He passed away in, and they said, "He looks
As he had woke and seen the face of Christ,
And with that rapturous smile held out his arms
To come to him!"-Jean Ingelow.
CHAPTER XIII.-JAMES THOMSON.-1700-1748.
1. James Thomson was born in the county of Roxburgh, Scotland, and passed his boyhood among the Cheviot Hills. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he devoted four years to the study of theology, but abandoned it, and, after the death of his father in 1725, went to London to seek his fortune. His college friend, David Mallet, secured him a situation as tutor, and, having been shown some of the poet's descriptions of Winter, he advised their publication. Thomson sold Winter to a publisher for three guineas, and in four years more he completed the work of which it was a part, and entitled it The Seasons. He is best known by this work, which he several times rewrote, and which, in its final form, received the commendation of Pope and of Lord Lyttleton.
2. Thomson also wrote some elegiac poems and some forgotten tragedies. In connection with Mallet he was the author of a Masque called Alfred, in which occurs the
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