As that to them a thousand years Doth seem as yesterday. Thy gardens and thy gallant walks There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers Quite through the streets, with silver sound, 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! Writ by a Friend, and with his blood; The couch of Time; Care's calm and bay: The other days and thou Make up one man, whose face thou art, Man had straightforward gone We could not choose but look on still; Sundays the pillars are On which heaven's palace arched lies They are the fruitful beds and borders SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright, Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 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 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, 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, What frost to that? what pole is not the zone 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, 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, Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness: U |