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How fearful is his case whom now God does not

chide

When sinning worst, to whom even chastening is de

nied!

God often would enrich, but finds not where to place His treasure, nor in hand nor heart a vacant space.

O, leave to God at sight of sin incensed to be! Sinner if thou art grieved, that is enough for thee.

Set not thy heart on things given only with intent
To be alleviations of thy banishment.

Ill fares the child of heaven, who will not entertain On earth the stranger's grief, the exile's sense of pain.

Mark how there still has run, enwoven from above, Through thy life's darkest woof, the golden thread of love.

Things earthly we must know ere love them: 't is alone Things heavenly that must be first loved and after known.

The sinews of Love's arm use makes more firm and

strong,

Which, being left unused, will disappear ere long.

Wouldst thou abolish quite strongholds of self and

sin?

Fear can but make the breach for Love to enter in.

When God afflicts thee, think he hews a rugged stone, Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.

Evil, like a rolling stone upon a mountain-top,
A child may first set off, a giant cannot stop.

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He knew, who healed our wounds, we quickly should be fain

Our old hurts to forget,—so let the scars remain.

When will the din of earth grate harshly on our ears? When we have once heard plain the music of the spheres.

Why win we not at once what we in prayer require ? That we may learn great things as greatly to desire.

The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in heaven will be;

Only the little brook has widened to a sea.

Who hunt this world's delight too late their hunting

rue,

When it a lion proves, the hunter to pursue.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.

I.

Wordsworth.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

'The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

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The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth

III.

Now while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound,

As to the tabour's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday;

Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd boy'

IV.

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss I feel, — I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen,
While the earth herself is adorning
This sweet May-morning,

And the children are culling

On every side,

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In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm

And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

But there's a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone :
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar :

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, —
He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's priest,

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INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.

And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

VI.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral !

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long,

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part ;

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