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“Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes
Thy long expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise;
And, what can never more be done,
Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

“O who will tell me where
He found thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallow’d solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower;
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fulness of the Deity?

“No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works, did my Lord hold
And lodge alone;
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

“Dear night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busie fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of Spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ’s[46] progress and his prayer time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

“God’s silent, searching flight:
When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
His still, soft call;
His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,
When spirits their Fair Kindred catch.

“Were all my loud, evil days,
Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent,
Whose peace but by some Angel’s wing or voice
Is seldom rent;
Then I in Heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here.”

[46] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37.

At the end he has these striking words–

“There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness—-“

This brings to our mind the concluding sentence of Mr. Ruskin’s fifth chapter in his second volume–“The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea.” Plato, if we rightly remember, says–“Truth is the body of God, light is His shadow.”

DEATH.

“Though since thy first sad entrance
By just Abel’s blood,
‘Tis now six thousand years well nigh,
And still thy sovereignty holds good;
Yet by none art thou understood.

“We talk and name thee with much ease,
As a tryed thing,
And every one can slight his lease,
As if it ended in a Spring,
Which shades and bowers doth rent-free bring.

“To thy dark land these heedless go,
But there was One
Who search’d it quite through to and fro,
And then, returning like the Sun,
Discover’d all that there is done.

“And since his death we throughly see
All thy dark way;
Thy shades but thin and narrow be,
Which his first looks will quickly fray:
Mists make but triumphs for the day.”

THE WATER-FALL.

“With what deep murmurs, through time’s silent stealth,
Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide and call,
As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid
Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid.”

THE SHOWER.

“Waters above! Eternal springs!
The dew that silvers the Dove’s wings!
O welcome, welcome to the sad!
Give dry dust drink, drink that makes glad.
Many fair Evenings, many flowers
Sweetened with rich and gentle showers,
Have I enjoyed, and down have run
Many a fine and shining Sun;
But never, till this happy hour,
Was blest with such an evening shower!”

What a curious felicity about the repetition of “drink” in the fourth line.

“Isaac’s Marriage” is one of the best of the pieces, but is too long for insertion.

“THE RAINBOW”

has seldom been better sung:

“Still young and fine! but what is still in view
We slight as old and soil’d, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou, when Shem’s admiring eye
Thy burnisht, flaming Arch did first descry!
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world’s gray fathers in one knot,
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,
Forms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air:
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and Sunshine! the sure tye
Of thy Lord’s hand, the object[A] of His eye!
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distant and low, I can in thine see Him
Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne,
And mindes the Covenant ‘twixt All and One.”