LV.

THE RIGHT USE OF PRAYER.

THEREFORE when thou wouldst pray, or dost thine alıns,

Blow not a trump before thee : hypocrites

Do thus, vaingloriously; the common streets
Boast of their largess, echoing their psalms.
On such the laud of men, like unctuous balms,

Falls with sweet savour. Impious counterfeits !

Prating of heaven, for earth their bosom beats ! Grasping at weeds, they lose immortal palms ! God needs not iteration nor vain cries :

That man communion with his God might share

Below, Christ gave the ordinance of prayer :
Vague ambages, and witless ecstasies,

Avail not : ere a voice to prayer be given
The heart should rise on wings of love to heaven.

LVI.

JERUSALEM.

AND sitt'st thou there, O lost Jerusalem !

Bowed down, yet something still of royal state

Ennobling thee in ruin? Thee the weight
Of age regards not : thou art as the gem
Uudimmed by time : yet is the diadem,
And thrones, that made thee like the common

Great,
All perished, and thy People desolate ;
Thy holiness a scoff, thy power a dream !
The arm of the Omnipotent is on
Thy guiltiness ; a living Death art thou ;

An all-enduring miracle : for God
Hath set, in record of His slaughtered Son,
His ineffaceable seal upon thy brow;

And cursed the land a dying Saviour trod !

ALL holy influences dwell within

The breast of Childhood : instincts fresh from God

Inspire it, ere the heart beneath the rod
Of grief hath bled, or caught the plague of sin,
How mighty was that fervour which could win

Its way to infant souls !—and was the sod

Of Palestine by infant Croises trod ? Like Joseph went they forth, or Benjamin, In all their touching beauty, to redeem ?

And did their soft lips kiss the sepulchre ? Alas! the lovely pageant, as a dream,

Faded I they sank not through ignoble fear ; They felt not Moslem steel. By mountain, stream,

In sands, in fens, they died-no mother near !

LVIII.

THE SUN-GOD.

I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood
High in his luminous car, himself more bright;
An Archer of immeasurable might:
On his left shoulder hung his quivered load ;
Spurned by his steeds the eastern mountains glowed;
Forward his eager eye, and brow of light
He bent; and, while both hands that arch embowed,
Shaft after shaft pursued the flying night.

No wings profaned that god-like form : around
His neck high-held an ever-moving crowd
Of locks hung glistening : while such perfect sound
Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome
Thrilled as a dew-drop; and each passing cloud
Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.

LIX.

THE SETTING OF THE MOON NEAR CORINTH.

From that dejected brow in silence beaming
A light it seems too feeble to retain,
A sad calm tearful light through vapours gleaming,
Slowly thou sinkest on the Ægean main ;
To me an image, in thy placid seeming
Of some fair mourner who will not complain ;
Of one whose cheek is pale, whose eyes are streaming,
Whose sighs are heaved unheard,-not heaved in vain.

And yet what power is thine ? as thou dost sink,
Down sliding slow along that azure hollow,
The great collected Deep thy course doth follow,
Amorous the last of those faint smiles to drink ;
And all his lifted fleets in thee obey
The symbol of an unpresuming sway!