Time is our tedious song should here have ending: Heav'n's youngest teemed star Hath fix'd her polish'd car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending: And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnest angels sit in order serviceable. IV. THE PASSION. 1. EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth, In wintry solstice like the shorten❜d light 2. For now to sorrow must I tune my song, And set my harp to notes of saddest woe, Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long, Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than só, Which he for us did freely undergo: Most perfect hero, try'd in heaviest plight Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight! 3. He sov'reign Priest stooping his regal head, His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies; Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide, Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's side. 4. These latest scenes confine my roving verse, Of lute, or viol still more apt for mournful things. Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief, And work my flatter'd fancy to belief, That Heav'n and Earth are colour'd with my woe; My sorrows are too dark for day to know: The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters where my tears have wash'd a wannish white. 6. See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels, In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit. Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock For sure so well instructed are my tears, 8. Or should I thence hurried on viewless wing, Might think th' infection of my sorrows loud Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud. This subject the Author finding to be above the years he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished. V. ON TIME. FLY, envious Time, till thou run out thy race, Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace; So little is our loss, So little is thy gain. For when as each thing bad thou hast intomb'd, Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss With an individual kiss; And Joy shall overtake us as a flood, When every thing that is sincerely good And perfectly divine, With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine Of him, t' whose happy-making sight alone When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb, Attir'd with stars, we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, VI. UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. YE flaming Pow'rs, and winged Warriours bright Seas wept from our deep sorrow: He who with all Heav'n's heraldry whilere Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease; Sore doth begin His infancy to seize! O more exceeding love or law more just? Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above And that great covenant which we still transgress |