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THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

STAND and adore! how glorious He
That dwells in bright eternity!

We gaze and we confound our sight,
Plunged in th' abyss of dazzling light.

Thou sacred One, Almighty Three,
Great, everlasting Mystery,

What lofty numbers shall we frame
Equal to thy tremendous name?

Seraphs, the nearest to the throne,
Begin to speak the Great Unknown:
Attempt the song, wind up your strings,
To notes untried, and boundless things.

You, whose capacious powers survey
Largely beyond our eyes of clay,
Yet what a narrow portion too

Is seen, or thought, or known by you!

How flat your highest praises fall
Before th' immense Original!

Weak creatures we, that strive in vain
To reach an uncreated strain.

Great God forgive our feeble lays,
Sound out thine own eternal praise;
A song so vast, a theme so high,
Call for the voice that tuned the sky.

WATTS.

EARTH AND HEAVEN.

HAST thou not seen, impatient boy?

Hast thou not read the solemn truth,
That gray experience writes for giddy youth
On every mortal joy!

Pleasure must be dashed with pain:
And yet, with heedless haste,

The thirsty boy repeats the taste,

Nor hearkens to despair, but tries the bowl again.
The rills of pleasure never run sincere:

Earth has no unpolluted spring,

From the cursed soil some dangerous taint they bear; So roses grow on thorns, and honey wears a sting.

In vain we seek a heaven below the sky;
The world has false but flattering charms;
Its distant joys show big in our esteem,
But lessen still as they draw near the eye:
In our embrace the visions die:
And when we grasp the airy forms,
We lose the pleasing dream.

Earth, with her scenes of gay delight,
Is but a landscape rudely drawn,
With glaring colours, and false light;
Distance commends it to the sight,

For fools to gaze upon,

But bring the nauseous daubing nigh, Coarse and confused the hideous figures lie,

Dissolve the pleasure, and offend the eye.

Look up, my soul, pant tow'rd the eternal hills; Those heavens are fairer than they seem; There pleasures all sincere glide on in crystal rills, There not a dreg of guilt defiles,

Nor grief disturbs the stream.

That Canaan knows no noxious thing,

No cursed soil, no tainted spring,

Nor roses grow on thorns, nor honey wears a sting.

HYMN FOR NOON.

THE sun is swiftly mounted high,
It glitters in the southern sky;
Its beams with force and glory beat,

And fruitful earth is filled with heat.
Father, also with thy fire,

Warm the cold, the dead desire,

And make the sacred love of thee,
Within my soul a sun to me.
Let it shine so fairly bright,

That nothing else be took for light,
That worldly charms be seen to fade,

And in its lustre find a shade;

Let it strongly shine within,

To scatter all the clouds of sin,

That drive when gusts of passion rise,

And intercept it from our eyes.

Let its glory more than vie

With the sun that lights the sky;

Let it swiftly mount in air,

Mount with that, and leave it there;

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WATTS.

And soar with more aspiring flight,
To realms of everlasting light.

PARNELL.

A CHURCHYARD BY NIGHT.

THOSE with bending osier bound,

That nameless heave the crumbled ground,
Quick to the glancing thought disclose,
Where toil and poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,

The chisel's slender help to fame
(Which ere our set of friends decay
Their frequent steps may wear away),
A middle race of mortals own,
Men, half ambitious, all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,
Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,
Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,
Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones,-
These, all the poor remains of state,
Adorn the rich, or praise the great;
Who, while on earth in fame they live,
Are senseless of the fame they give.

Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,
The bursting earth unveils the shades!
All slow, and wan, and wrapped with shrouds,
They rise in visionary crowds,

And all with sober accent cry

"Think, mortal, what it is to die."

Now from yon black and funeral yew, That bathes the charnel-house with dew, Methinks, I hear a voice begin

(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din,
Ye tolling clocks, no time resound

O'er the long lake and midnight ground!)
It sends a peal of hollow groans,
Thus speaking from among the bones:

"When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a king of fears am I !

They view me like the last of things;
They make, and then they draw, my strings,
Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
No more my spectre-form appears.
Death's but a path that must be trod,
If man would ever pass to God:
A port of calms, a state to ease
From the rough rage of swelling seas."
Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
Deep pendant cypress, mourning poles,
Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,
And plumes of black, that, as they tread,
Nod o'er the escutcheons of the dead?

Nor can the parted body know,
Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;
As men who long in prison dwell,
With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
Whene'er their suffering years are run,
Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;
Such joy, though far transcending sense,
Have pious souls at parting hence.
On earth, and in the body placed,
A few, and evil years, they waste:
But when their chains are cast aside,
See the glad scene unfolding wide,

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