God guard us fafe from aught of ill,
In knowledge or in deed!

To know His love, to do His will
We ask no higher meed.

May naught avert the bleffing given
His creatures at their birth;
Difturb the harmonies of Heaven,
Or mar the peace of earth.

HANKINSON.

XXXIV.

DEATH.

HE feeble pulfe, the gafping breath,
The clenched teeth, the glazed eye,-
Are these thy fting, thou dreadful death?
O grave, are these thy victory?

The mourners by our parting bed,
The wife, the children weeping nigh,

The difmal pageant of the dead-
Thefe, these are not thy victory!

But from the much-loved world to part,
Our luft untamed, our spirit high,
All nature struggling at the heart,
Which, dying, feels it dare not die!

To dream through life a gaudy dream
Of pride, and pomp, and luxury.

Till waken'd by the nearer gleam
Of burning, boundless agony;

To meet o'er foon our angry King,
Whose love we paffed unheeded by-
Is this, O death, thy deadlieft fting?
O grave, and this thy victory?

O Searcher of the fecret heart,
Who deigned for finful man to die!
Reftore us ere the spirit part,

Nor give to hell the victory.

BISHOP HEBER.*

up

XXXV.

PRAYER.

and watch the new-born rill
Juft trickling from its moffy bed,
Streaking the heath-clad hill
With a bright emerald thread.

Can't thou her bold career foretell,
What rocks fhe fhall o'erleap or rend,
How far in Ocean's fwell

Her freshening billows fend?

*This powerful defcription of untamed fin at its clofing hour will more forcibly remind the reader of that awful hymn by Peter Damian on "the Laft Day," which is given in this collection, than what is ufually found in modern compofitions.

Perchance that little brook fhall flow
The bulwark of fome mighty realm,
Bear navies to and fro

With monarchs at their helm.

Even fo, the course of prayer who knows?
It fprings in filence where it will,
Springs out of fight, and flows
At first a lonely rill :

But streams fhall meet it by and by
From thousand fympathetic hearts,
Together fwelling high

Their chaunt of many parts.

Unheard by all but angel ears
The good Cornelius knelt alone,
Nor dreamed his prayers
Would help a world undone.

and tears

The while upon his terraced roof
The loved Apoftle to his Lord
In filent thought aloof

For heavenly vision foared,

Far o'er the glowing western main
His wiftful brow was upward raised,
Where, like an Angel's train

The burnished water blazed.

The faint befide the ocean prayed,
The foldier in his chofen bower,
Where all his eye furveyed
Seemed facred in that hour.

To each unknown his brother's prayer,
Yet brethren true in deareft love

Were they, and now they fhare
Fraternal joys above.

Keeble.

XXXVI.

PRAYER.

ATHER of all, in every age,
In every clime adored;
By faint, by favage, and by fage,
Jehovah, Jove, our Lord.

If I am right, Thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way.

Teach me to feel another's woe;
To hide the faults I fee;

The mercy I to others fhow,
That mercy fhow to me.

POPE.

Engine against th' Almightie, finner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Chrift-fide-piercing spear,
The fix-daies-world tranfpofing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear.

Softneffe, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliffe, Exalted Manna, gladneffe of the beft,

Heaven in ordinarie, man well dreft, The milkie way, the bird of Paradife.

Church-bells beyond the ftars heard, the foul's blood, The land of fpices, fomething understood.

GEORGE HERBERT.