What thanks I owe thee, and what love!

A boundless, endless store,

Shall echo through the realms above

When time shall be no more.

COWPER.

RETIREMENT.

LEST Retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreat from care, that never must be

mine!

How blest is he who crowns, in shades likes these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease;

Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly!
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands, in guilty state,
To spurn imploring Famine from the gate;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend;
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
While Resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.

GOLDSMITH.

SOLITUDE.

HERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

BYRON.

SILENT DEVOTION.

HE inward sighs of humble penitence,
Rise to the ear of Heaven, when pealed

hymns

Are scattered with the sound of common air.

JOANNA BAILLIE

SILENT DEVOTION.

S down in the sunless retreats of the ocean
Sweet flowers are springing no mortal
may see,

So deep in my bosom the prayer of devotion,
Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee.
As still to the star of its worship, though clouded,
The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea,
So, dark as I roam, in this wintry world shrouded,
The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.

MOORE

PRAYER.

RAYER is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed;

The motion of a hidden fire,

That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear;

The upward glancing of an eye,
When none but God is near.