THEY SERVE WHO STAND AND WAIT.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not

need

Either man's work, or his own gifts: who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his

state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

FOR GOD'S SAKE.

TEACH me, my God and King.
In all things Thee to see;
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for Thee:

Not rudely, as a beast,

To run into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.

A man that looks on glass,

On it

may stay his eye;

Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,

And then the heaven espy.

All may of thee partake:

Nothing can be so mean,

Which, with this tincture, -FOR THY SAKE, Will not grow bright and clean.

For God's Sake.

169

A servant, with this clause,

Makes drudgery divine :

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that, and the action, fine.

This is the famous stone

That turneth all to gold;

For that which God doth touch and own

Cannot for less be told.

THOU CAM'ST NOT TO THY PLACE BY

ACCIDENT.

THOU Cam'st not to thy place by accident:
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action

see,

Do not for this give room to discontent;
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,

In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free
From outward hindrance or impediment :
For presently this hindrance thou shalt find

That without which all goodness were a task So slight, that Virtue never could grow strong: And wouldst thou do one duty to His mind, The Imposer's, overburdened, thou shalt ask, And own thy need of grace to help, ere long.

ADEQUACY.

WE cannot say the morning sun fulfils
Ingloriously its course; nor that the clear
Strong stars, without significance, insphere
Our habitation. We, meantime, our ills
Heap up against this good, and lift a cry
Against this work-day world, this ill-spread
feast,

As if ourselves were better certainly

Than what we come to. Maker and HighPriest,

I ask thee not my joys to multiply,

Only to make me worthier of the least!