NOTHING PERFECT ON EARTH.

EVEN as the soil (which April's gentle showers
Have filled with sweetness and enriched with flowers,)
Rears up her sucking plants, still shooting forth
The tender blossoms of her timely birth;
But if denied the beams of cheerly May,
They hang their withered heads, and fade away:
So man, assisted by the Almighty's hand,
His faith doth flourish and securely stand;
But left awhile, forsook, as in a shade,

It languishes, and nipped with sin, doth fade.
No gold is pure from dross, though oft refined;
The strongest cedar's shaken with the wind;
The fairest rose hath no prerogative
Against the fretting canker-worm; the hive
No honey yields unblended with the wax;
The finest linen hath both soil and bracks;
The best of men have sins, none live secure.
In nature nothing's perfect, nothing pure.

JERUSALEM IN RUINS.

(FROM SION'S ELEGIES.)

WOUNDED and wasted by th' eternal hand
Of heaven, I grovel on the ground; my land
Is turned a Golgotha; before mine eye

Unsepulchred my murdered people lie;

My dead lie rudely scattered on the stones,

My causeways all are paved with dead men's bones;
The fierce destroyer doth alike forbear
The maiden's trembling, and the matron's tear;
The imperial sword spares neither fool nor wise,
The old man's pleading, nor the infant's cries.
Vengeance is deaf and blind, and she respects
Not young, nor old, nor wise, nor fool, nor sex.

MERCY TEMPERING JUSTICE.

HAD not the milder hand of Mercy broke
The furious violence of that fatal stroke
Offended Justice struck, we had been quite
Lost in the shadows of eternal night.

Thy mercy, Lord, is like the morning sun,
Whose beams undo what sable night hath done;
Or like a stream, the current of whose course,
Restrained a while, runs with a swifter force.
Oh! let me glow beneath those sacred beams,
And after bathe me in those silver streams;
To Thee alone my sorrows shall appeal :
Hath earth a wound too hard for heaven to heal?

HOPE IN GOD.

IN thee, dear Lord, my pensive soul respires,
Thou art the fulness of my choice desires;
Thou art that sacred spring, whose waters burst
In streams to him that seeks with holy thirst.
Thrice happy man, thrice happy thirst, to bring
Thy fainting soul to so, so sweet a spring;
Thrice happy he, whose well-resolved breast
Expects no other aid, no other rest;
Thrice happy he, whose downy age has been
Reclaimed by scourges from the pride of sin,
And early seasoned with the taste of truth,
Remembers his Creator in his youth.

DECAY OF LIFE.

THE day grows old, the low-pitched lamp hath made No less than treble shade,

And the descending damp doth now prepare

T'uncurl bright Titan's hair;

Whose western wardrobe now begins to unfold
Her purples fringed with gold,

To clothe his evening glory, when th' alarms
Of rest shall call to rest in Thetis' arms.

Nature now calls to supper, to refresh
The spirits of all flesh.

The toiling ploughman drives his thirsty teams
To taste the slippery streams;

The droyling swineherd knocks away, and feasts
His hungry whining guests;

The box-bill ouzel, and the dappled thrush,
Like hungry rivals meet at their beloved bush.

And now the cold autumnal dews are seen
To cobweb every green;

And by the low-shorn rowans doth appear
The fast-declining year;

The sapless branches doff their summer-suits,
And wain their winter-fruits;

And stormy blasts have forced the quaking trees

To wrap their trembling limbs in suits of mossy frieze.

Our wasted taper now hath brought her light

To the next door to night;

Her sprightless flame, grown great with snuff, doth turn
Sad as her neighbouring urn;

Her slender inch, that yet unspent remains,
Lights but to further pains;

And in a silent language bids her guest
Prepare his weary limbs to take eternal rest.

Now careful age hath pitched her painful plough
Upon the furrowed brow;

And snowy blasts of discontented care,

Have blanched the falling hair;

Suspicious envy, mixed with jealous spite,
Disturbs his weary night;

He threatens youth with age; and now, alas!

He owns not what he is, but vaunts the man he was.

1

Grey hairs, peruse thy days, and let thy past
Read lectures to thy last:

Those hasty wings that hurried them away,
Will give these days no day;

The constant wheels of nature scorn to tire,
Until her works expire:

That blast that nipped thy youth will ruin thee,

That hand that shook the branch will quickly strike the tree.

WILLIAM HABINGTON.

THIS amiable man and pleasing poet was born at Hendlip, in Worcestershire, in 1605. His family being Catholics, he was educated at St. Omer's, and afterwards at Paris. At an early age he married Lucia, daughter of William Herbert, first Lord Powis; this lady was the Castara of his poems. He died in 1654.

The poems of Habington were introduced for the first time in a general collection, by Mr. Chalmers. "The great charm of these poems," says Mr. Wilmot, in his Lives of the Sacred Poets, "is their purity, and domestic tenderness: the religion of his fancy is never betrayed into any unbecoming mirth, or rapturous enthusiasm. He is always amiable, simple, and unaffected; if he has not the ingenuity of some of his rivals, he is also free from their conceits."

NON NOBIS DOMINE.-DAVID.

No marble statue, nor high
Aspiring pyramid, be raised

To lose its head within the sky!
What claim have I to memory?

God, be thou only praised!

Thou in a moment canst defeat

The mighty conquests of the proud,
And blast the laurels of the great;
Thou canst make brighter glory set
I' th' sudden in a cloud.

How can the feeble works of art

Hold out against th' assault of storms? Or how can brass to him impart

Sense of surviving fame, whose heart
Is now resolved to worms?

Blind folly of triumphing pride!

Eternity, why build'st thou here?
Dost thou not see the highest tide
Its humbled stream in the ocean hide,
And ne'er the same appear?

That tide which did its banks o'erflow,
As sent abroad by th' angry sea
To level vastest buildings low,

And all our trophies overthrow,

Ebbs like a thief away.

And thou who, to preserve thy name,

Leav'st statues in some conquered land,

How will posterity scorn fame,

When th' idol shall receive a maim,
And lose a foot or hand!

How wilt thou hate thy wars, when he
Who only for his hire did raise
Thy counterfeit in stone, with thee
Shall stand competitor, and be

Perhaps thought worthier praise!

No laurel wreath about my brow!

To thee, my God, all praise, whose law The conquered doth, and conqueror bow!

For both dissolve to air, if Thou

Thy influence but withdraw.