Whom all the world is not enough to hold.
Who of His years or of His age hath told?
Never such age so young, never a Child so old.

"And yet but newly He was infanted,
And yet already He was sought to die,
Yet scarcely born, already banished,

Not able yet to go, and forced to fly,
But scarcely fled away, when by and by
The tyrant's sword with blood is all defiled,
And Rachel, for her sons with fury wild,

Cries, O thou cruel king! and, O my sweetest child!

66

Egypt His nurse became, where Nilus springs,

Who straight, to entertain the rising sun,

The hasty harvest in his bosom brings;

But now for drouth the fields were all undone,
And now with waters all is overrun,

So fast the Cynthian mountains poured their snow,
When once they felt the sun so near them glow,
That Nilus Egypt lost, and to a sea did grow.

"The angels carolled loud their song of peace,
The cursed oracles were strucken dumb,
To see their Shepherd the poor shepherds press,
To see their King the kingly Sophies come;
And them to guide unto his Master's home,

A star comes dancing up the orient,

That springs for joy over the strawy tent,

Where gold, to make their Prince a crown, they all present.

"Young John, glad child, before he could be born,
Leaped in the womb, his joy to prophesy;
Old Anna, though with age all spent and worn,
Proclaims her Saviour to posterity;

And Simeon fast his dying notes doth ply.
Oh, how the blessed souls about him trace!
It is the fire of heaven thou dost embrace,-
Sing, Simeon, sing!-sing, Simeon, sing apace!"

With that the mighty thunder dropped away
From God's unwary arm, now milder grown,
And melted into tears, as if to pray

For pardon and for pity, it had known,

That should have been for sacred vengeance thrown : Thereto the armies angelic devowed

Their former rage, and all to Mercy bowed,

Their broken weapons at her feet they gladly strowed.

66

Bring, bring ye Graces, all your silver flaskets, Painted with every choicest flower that grows, That I may soon unflower your fragrant baskets, To strew the fields with odours where He goes, Let whatsoe'er he treads on be a rose."

So down she let her eyelids fall, to shine

Upon the rivers of bright Palestine,

Whose woods drop honey, and her rivers skip with wine.

Giles Fletcher.

HUMILIATION.

Lo He! who, entering these foul cells of flesh,

Us thralls to loose, our bondage undertook,

Us sick to heal, our sicknesses endured,

Us poor to help, our poverty assumed,

Us dead to quicken, gave himself to death,

Exile endured, us banished to restore.

Thus shame by shame, thus wound by wound is cured;
Sickness slays sickness, death by death is chased;

He dies that lives, to bring the dead to life;
The heir departs, to make the bondsmen heirs;
Rich begs, strong faints, to make the poor abound;
The freeman serves, to make the servants free;
The high bends low, to make the low rise high;
The light grows dark, to make the dark grow bright;
That stars may rise, the true sun wans eclipsed,

Sickens the leech, to cure the sick by sickness;
Cedar to hyssop, heaven to earth conforms;
Giant to dwarf, to smoke light, rich to poor,
Whole to sick, king to slave, purple to sackcloth.
Lo He, who, pitying our lot, from halls

Of his Eternal Father issuing, bore

The foulness of our lot, sinless assumed

Himself the smart, and damage of our guilt.

J. R. S. (from the Latin).

A HYMN OF HEAVENLY LOVE.

Love, lift me up upon thy golden wings

From this base world unto thy heaven's height, Where I may see those admirable things

Which there thou workest by thy sovereign might, Far above feeble reach of earthly sight, That I thereof an heavenly hymn may sing Unto the God of Love, high heaven's King.

Many lewd lays (ah, woe is me the more!)

In praise of that mad fit which fools call Love,
I have in the heat of youth made heretofore,
That in light wits did loose affection move;
But all those follies now I do reprove,
And turned have the tenor of my string,
The heavenly praises of true Love to sing.

And

ye

that wont with greedy vain desire

To read my fault, and, wondering at my flame,

To warm yourselves at my wide sparkling fire,
Since now that heat is quenched, quench my blame,
And in her ashes shroud my dying shame;
For who my passed follies now pursues,
Begins his own, and my old fault renews.

Before this world's great frame, in which all things.
Are now contained, found any being-place,

Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas wings

About that mighty bound which doth embrace The rolling spheres, and parts their hours by space, That High Eternal Power, which now doth move In all these things, moved in itself by love.

It loved itself, because itself was fair

(For fair is loved), and of itself begot
Like to itself his eldest Son and Heir,
Eternal, pure, and void of sinful blot,
The firstling of His joy, in whom no jot
Of love's dislike or pride was to be found,
Whom He therefore with equal honour crowned.

With Him He reigned, before all time prescribed,
In endless glory and immortal might,

Together with that Third from them derived,

Most wise, most holy, most Almighty Sprite!

Whose kingdom's throne no thoughts of earthly wight Can comprehend, much less my trembling verse With equal words can hope it to rehearse.