SUNDAYS. BRIGHT shadows of true rest! some shoots of bliss! The next world's gladness prepossessed in this; Eternity in time; the steps by which We climb above all ages; lamps that light Transplanted paradise; God's walking hour; The creature's jubilee; God's parle with dust; Heaven here; man on those hills of myrrh, of flowers; Angels descending; the returns of trust; A gleam of glory after six days' showers; Deducted from the whole; the combs and hive, The milky-way chalked out with suns; a clue That guides through erring hours, and in full story; A taste of heaven on earth; the pledge and cue THE RETREAT. HAPPY those early days, when I Shined in my angel-infancy! Before I understood this place, Appointed for my second race; Or taught my soul to fancy aught When yet I had not walked above Before I taught my tongue to wound But felt through all this fleshly dress And tread again that ancient track! But, oh! my soul, with too much stay, THE RAINBOW. STILL young and fine! but what is still in view When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair, THE WORLD. I SAW eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, And round beneath it, time in hours, days, years, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world The doting lover in his quaintest strain Did there complain; Near him his lute, his fancy, and his flights,- With gloves and knots, the silly snares of pleasure; All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe, He did not stay nor go; Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout; Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found, Where he did clutch his prey,-but one did see That policy. Churches and altars fed him; perjuries Were gnats and flies; It rained about him blood and tears, but he The fearful miser on a heap of rust Sate pining all his life there-did scarce trust Yet would not place one piece above, but lives Thousands there were as frantic as himself, The downright epicure placed heaven in sense, While others slipped into a wide excess, The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave, And poor despised truth sat counting by Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, O fools! (said I), thus to prefer dark night To live in grots and caves, and hate the day, The way which from this dead and dark abode A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he. But as I did their madness thus discuss, One whispered thus: "This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide, But for his Bride." 1 SIR EDWARD SHERBURNE. SIR EDWARD SHERBURNE was born in Lancashire, in 1618. He was a Catholic, but zealously served his royal master during the whole of the civil war, much to the injury of his fortune. Beside several poetical translations from Seneca and others, he was the author of a volume of Miscellanies, which contain many passages of great beauty. His attachment to James II. involved him in trouble at the Revolution, and he died almost in poverty, in 1702. TO THE ETERNAL WISDOM. O THOU eternal Mind! whose wisdom sees |