As that to them a thousand years

Doth seem as yesterday.

Thy gardens and thy gallant walks
Continually are green;

There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers
As nowhere else are seen.

Quite through the streets, with silver sound,
The flood of Life doth flow;

Upon whose banks on every side

The wood of Life doth grow.

There trees for evermore bear fruit,

And evermore do spring;

There evermore the angels sit,

And evermore do sing.

Jerusalem, my happy home,

Would God I were in thee!

Would God my woes were at an end,

Thy joys that I might see!

- ANON.

3.

SUNDAY.

O DAY most calm, most bright!
The fruit of this, the next world's bud;
The endorsement of supreme delight,

Writ by a Friend, and with his blood;

The couch of Time; Care's calm and bay:
The week were dark but for thy light;
Thy torch doth show the way.

The other days and thou

Make up one man, whose face thou art,
Knocking at heaven with thy brow:
The working-days are the back part;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow,
Till thy release appear.

Man had straightforward gone
To endless death; but thou dost pull
And turn us round, to look on One,
Whom, if we were not very dull,

We could not choose but look on still;
Since there is no place so alone
The which He doth not fill.

Sundays the pillars are

On which heaven's palace arched lies
The other days fill up the spare
And hollow room with vanities;

They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God's rich garden; that is bare
Which parts their ranks and orders.

SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,

Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows you have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;

But when the whole world turns to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

GEORGE HERBERT.

5.

THE FLOWER.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! e'en as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away,

Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who could have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite under ground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown ; Where they together

All the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing bell.
We say amiss,

This or that is:

Thy word is all, if we could spell.

Oh, that I once past changing were, Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither: Nor doth my flower

Want a spring-shower,

My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,

When thou dost turn,

And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only Light,
It cannot be

That I am he

On whom thy tempests fell at night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flowers that glide;

Which when we once can find and prove, Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide. Who would be more,

Swelling through store,

Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

WHEN God at first made man, Having a glass of blessing standing by; Let us (said he) pour on him all we can : Let the world's riches which dispersed lie Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honor, pleasure; When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,

Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said he)

Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.

U