TRIUMPHAL arch, that fill'st the sky,
When storms prepare to part,
I ask not proud philosophy,
To teach me what thou art.
Still seem, as to my childhood's sight,
A midway station given, For happy spirits to alight
Betwixt the earth and heaven.
Can all that optics teach, unfold
Thy form to please me so,
As when I dreamt of gems of gold,
Hid in thy radiant bow ?
When science from creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws!
And yet fair bow, no fabling dreams,
But words of the Most High,
Have told why first thy robe of beams
Was woven in the sky.
When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine;
How came the world's grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign!
And when its yellow lustre smiled
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child,
To bless the Bow of God.
Methinks thy jubilee to keep,
The first made anthem rang,
On earth delivered from the deep,
And the first poet sang.
How glorious is thy girdle cast
O'er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down.
As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.
For faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age,
That first spoke Peace to Man.
To mark the sufferings of the babe
That cannot speak its woe,
To see the infant's tears gush forth,
Yet know not why they flow;
To meet the meek, uplifted eye,
That fain would ask relief,
Yet cannot tell of agony-
This is a mother's grief.
Through dreary days and darker nights
To trace the mark of death,
To hear the faint and frequent sigh,
The quick and shorten'd breath;
To watch the last dread strife draw near,
And pray that struggle brief,
Though all is ended with its close—
This is a mother's grief.
To see in one short hour decay'd
The hope of future years;
To feel how vain a father's prayers,
How vain a mother's tears;
To think the cold grave now must close
O'er what was once the chief
Of all the treasured joys on earth-
This is a mother's grief.
Yet, when the first wild throb is past
Of anguish and despair,
To lift the eye of faith to heaven,
And think, "My child is there!"
This best can dry the gushing tears-
This yield the heart relief;
Until the Christian's pious hope
O'ercomes a mother's grief.
THE SWEETNESS OF RESTING ON GOD.
WHEN langour and disease invade
This trembling house of clay,
'Tis sweet to look beyond our cage,
And long to soar away.
Sweet to look inward, and attend
The whispers of his love;
Sweet to look upward to the throne
Where Jesus pleads above.
Sweet to look back, and see my name
In life's fair book marked down;
Sweet to look forward, and behold
Eternal joy my own.
Sweet to reflect, how grace divine
My sins on Jesus laid;
Sweet to remember that thy death
My debt of suffering paid.
Sweet on thy faithfulness to rest,
Whose love can never end;
Sweet on thy covenant of grace
For all things to depend.
Sweet in the confidence of faith,
To trust thy truth divine;
Sweet to lie passive in thy hands,
And have no will but thine.
If such the sweetness of the streams,
What will that fountain be,
Where saints and angels draw their bliss
Immediately from thee!
THE MOST EXCELLENT SONG, WHICH WAS
SOLOMON'S.
By Michael Drayton.
(Written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.)
THE FIFT CHAPTER.
WITHIN my garden plot,
Loe, I am present now;
I gathered haue the myrrhe and spice
That in abundance growe.
With honey, milke, and wine,
I haue refresht me here:
Eat, drink, my friends, be merry there,
With harty friendly cheare.
Although in slumbering sleep
It seems to you I lay,
Yet heare I my beloued knock,
Methinkes I heare him say:
Open to me the gate,
My loue, my heart's delight,
For loe, my locks are all bedewed
With drizzling drops of night,
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