On each would equal love the best confer,
Each by distinct affection dear to her;
One the first pledge that to her spouse she gave
And one unborn till he was in his grave;
This was his darling, that to her most kind;
A fifth was once a twin, the sixth is blind:
In each she lives-in each by turns she dies;
Smitten by pestilence before her eyes,
Three days and all are slain;-the heaviest doom
Is hers, their ice-barr'd cottage is their tomb.
-The wretch, whose limbs are impotent with cold,
In the warm comfort of a mantle roll'd,
Lies down to slumber on his soul's desire;
But wakes at morn, as wrapt in flames of fire,
Not Hercules, when from his breast he tore
The cloak envenom'd with the Centaur's gore,
Felt sharper pangs than he, who, mad with rage,
Dives in the gulf, or rolls in snow, t'assuage
His quenchless agony; the rankling dart
Within him burns till it consumes his heart.
From vale to vale th' affrighted victims fly,
But catch or give the plague with every sigh;
A touch contaminates the purest veins,
On deck, in groups embracing as they died,
Singly, erect, or slumbering side by side,
Behold the crew!-They sail'd, with hope elate,
For eastern Greenland; till, ensnared by fate,
In toils that mock'd their utmost strength and skill,
They felt, as by a charm, their ship stand still;
The madness of the wildest gale that blows,
Were mercy to that shudder of repose,
When withering horror struck from heart to heart,
The blunt rebound of Death's benumbing dart,
And each, a petrifaction at his post,
Looked on yon father, and gave up the ghost;'
He, meekly kneeling, with his hands upraised.
His beard of driven snow, eyes fix'd and glazed,
Alone among the dead shall yet survive,
-Th' imperishable dead that seem alive;
-Th' immortal dead, whose spirits, breaking free,
Bore his last words into eternity,
While with a seraph's zeal, a Christian's love,
Till his tongue fail'd, he spoke of joys above.
Now motionless, amidst the icy air,
He breathes from marble lips unutter'd prayer.
The clouds condensed, with dark, unbroken hue
Till the Black Death through all the region reigns.' Of stormy purple, overhang his view,
Comes there no ship again to Greenland's shore?
There comes another:-there shall come no more;
Nor this shall reach an haven :-What are these
Stupendous monuments upon the seas?
Works of Omnipotence, in wondrous forms,
Immovable as mountains in the storms?
Far as Imagination's eye can roll,
One range of Alpine glaciers to the pole
Flanks the whole eastern coast; and branching wide,
Arches o'er many a league th' indignant tide,
That works and frets, with unavailing flow,
To mine a passage to the beach below;
Thence from its neck that winter-yoke to rend,
And down the gulf the crashing fragments send.
There lies a vessel in this realm of frost,
Not wrecked, nor stranded, yet for ever lost;
Its keel imbedded in the solid mass;
Its glistening sails appear expanded glass;
The transverse ropes with pearls enormous strung,
The yards with icicles grotesquely hung.
Wrapt in the topmost shrouds there rests a boy,
His old sea-faring father's only joy;
Sprung from a race of rovers, ocean-born,
Nursed at the helm, he trod dry-land with scorn;
Through fourscore years from port to port he veer'd,
Quicksand, nor rock, nor foe, nor tempest fear'd;
Now cast ashore, though like a hulk he lie,
His son at sea is ever in his eye,
And his prophetic thought, from age to age,
Esteems the waves his offspring's heritage:
He ne'er shall know, in his Norwegian cot,
How brief that son's career, how strange his lot;
Writhed round the mast, and sepulchred in air,
Him shall no worm devour, no vulture tear;
Congeal'd to adamant his frame shall last,
Though empires change, till time and tide be past
1 The depopulation of old Greenland is supposed to have been greatly accelerated by the introduction of the plague, which, under the name of the Black Death, made dreadful havoc throughout Europe towards the close of the fourteenth century.
Save in the west, to which he strains his sight,
Till thence th' emerging sun, with lightning blaze,
One golden streak, that grows intensely bright,
Pours the whole quiver of his arrowy rays;
The smitten rocks to instant diamond turn,
And round th' expiring saint such visions burn,
As if the gates of Paradise were thrown
Wide open to receive his soul;'t is flown!
The glory vanishes, and over all
Cimmerian darkness spreads her funeral pall.
Morn shall return, and noon, and eve, and night.
Meet here with interchanging shade and light;
But from this bark no timber shall decay,
Of these cold forms no feature pass away;
Perennial ice around th' incrusted how
The peopled deck, and full-rigg'd masts shall grow,
Till from the sun himself the whole be hid,
Or spied beneath a crystal pyramid;
As in pure amber, with divergent lines,
A rugged shell emboss'd with sea-weed shines.
From age to age increased with annual snow,
This new Mont Blanc among the clouds may glow,
Whose conic peak, that earliest greets the dawn,
And latest from the sun's shut eye withdrawn,
Shall from the zenith, through incumbent gloom,
Burn like a lamp upon this naval tomb.
But when th' archangel's trumpet sounds on high,
The pile shall burst to atoms through the sky,
And leave its dead, upstarting, at the call,
Naked and pale, before the Judge of all.
Once more to Greenland's long-forsaken beach,
Which foot of man again shall never reach,
1 The Danish Chronicle says, that the Greenland colonists were tributary to the kings of Norway from the year 1023; soon after which they embraced Christianity. In its more flourishing period this province is stated to have been divided into a hundred parishes, under the superintendence of a bishop. From 1120 to 140, the succession of seventeen bishops is recorded. In the last-mentioned year, Andrew, ordained bishop of Greenland by Askill, archbishop of Drontheim, sailed for his diocese, but whether he arrived there, or was cast away, was neve known. To his imagined fate this episode alludes.
Imagination wings her flight, explores
The march of Pestilence along the shores,
And sees how Famine in his steps hath paced,
While Winter laid the soil for ever waste.
Dwellings are heaps of fall'n or falling stones,
The charnel-houses of unburied bones,
On which obscene and prowling monsters fed,
But with the ravin in their jaws fell dead.
Thus while Destruction, blasting youth and age,
Raged till it wanted victims for its rage;
Love, the last feeling that from life retires,
Blew the faint sparks of his unfuell'd fires.
In the cold sunshine of yon narrow dell
Affection lingers ;-there two lovers dwell,
Greenland's whole family; nor long forlorn,
There comes a visitant; a babe is born.
O'er his meek helplessness the parents smiled;
"T was Hope-for Hope is every mother's child;
Then seem'd they, in that world of solitude,
The Eve and Adam of a race renew'd.
Brief happiness! too perilous to last;
The moon hath wax'd and waned, and all is past:
Behold the end :-one morn, athwart the wall,
They mark'd the shadow of a reindeer fall,
Bounding in tameless freedom o'er the snow:
The father track'd him, and with fatal bow
Smote down the victim; but before his eyes,
A rabid she-bear pounced upon the prize;
A shaft into the spoiler's flank he sent,
She turn'd in wrath, and limb from limb had rent
The hunter; but his dagger's plunging steel,
With riven bosom, made the monster reel;
Unvanquish'd, both to closer combat flew,
Assailants each, till each the other slew;
Mingling their blood from mutual wounds, they lay
Stretch'd on the carcass of their antler'd prey.
Meanwhile his partner waits, her heart at rest
No burthen but her infant on her breast:
With him she slumbers, or with him she plays,
And tells him all her dreams of future days,
Asks him a thousand questions, feigns replies,
And reads whate'er she wishes in his eyes.
-Red evening comes; no husband's shadow falls
Where fell the reindeer's o'er the latticed walls:
'Tis night; no footstep sounds towards her door;
The day returns,—but he returns no more.
In frenzy forth she sallies; and with cries,
To which no voice except her own replies
In frightful echoes, starting all around,
Where human voice again shall never sound,
She seeks him, finds him not; some angel-guide
In mercy turns her from the corpse aside;
Perhaps his own freed spirit, lingering near,
Who waits to waft her to a happier sphere,
But leads her first, at evening, to their cot,
Where lies the little one, all day forgot;
Imparadised in sleep she finds him there,
Kisses his cheek, and breathes a mother's prayer
Three days she languishes, nor can she shed
One tear, between the living and the dead;
When her lost spouse comes o'er the widow's though!
The pangs of memory are to madness wrought:
But when her suckling's eager lips are felt,
Her heart would fain-but oh! it cannot-melt;
At length it breaks, while on her lap he lies,
With baby wonder gazing in her eyes.
Poor orphan! mine is not a hand to trace
Thy little story, last of all thy race!
Not long thy sufferings; cold and colder grown,
The arms that clasp thee chill thy limbs to stone.
-T is done :-from Greenland's coast, the latest sigh
Bore infant innocence beyond the sky.
In the following Imitations of portions of the true "Songs of Zion," the author pretends not to have succeeded better than any that have gone before him; but, having followed in the track of none, he would venture to hope, that, by avoiding the rugged literality of some, and the diffusive paraphrases of others, he may, in a few instances, have approached nearer than either of them have generally done, to the ideal model of what devotional poems, in a modern tongue,| grounded upon the subjects of ancient psalms, yet suited for Christian edification, ought to be. Beyond this he dare not say more than that, whatever symptoms of feebleness or bad taste may be betrayed in the execution of these pieces, he offers not to the public the premature fruits of idleness or haste. So far as he recollects, he has endeavored to do his best, and, in doing so, he has never hesitated to sacrifice ambitious ornament to simplicity, clearness, and force of thought and expression. If in the event, it shall|
be found that he has added a little to the small na tional stock of" psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs," in which piety speaks the language of poetry, and poetry the language of inspiration, he trusts that he will be humbly contented, and unfeignedly thankful. SHEFFIELD, May 21, 1822.
THRICE happy he, who shuns the way
That leads ungodly men astray;
Who fears to stand where sinners meet,
Nor with the scorner takes his seat.
The law of God is his delight;
That cloud by day, that fire by night,
Shall be his comfort in distress,
And guide him through the wilderness
His works shall prosper;-he shall be
A fruitful, fair, unwithering tree,
That, planted where the river flows,
Nor drought, nor frost, nor mildew knows.
Not so the wicked;-they are cast
Like chaff upon the eddying blast:
In judgment they shall quake for dread,
Nor with the righteous lift their head.
For God hath spied their secret path,
And they shall perish in his wrath;
He too hath mark'd his people's road,
And brings them to his own abode.
THE Tempter to my soul hath said,
There is no help in God for thee:" Lord, lift thou up thy servant's head, My glory, shield, and solace be.
Thus to the Lord I raised my cry:
He heard me from his holy hill;
At his command the waves roll'd by-
He beckon'd, and the winds were still.
I laid me down and slept :-I woke— Thou, Lord, my spirit didst sustain; Bright from the east the morning broke, Thy comforts rose on me again.
I will not fear, though armed throngs Compass my steps, in all their wrath; Salvation to the Lord belongs,
His presence guards his people's path.
How long, ye sons of men, will ye
The servant of the Lord despise,
Delight yourselves with vanity,
And trust in refuges of lies?
Know that the Lord hath set apart
The godly man in every age:
He loves a meek and lowly heart-
His people are his heritage.
Then stand in awe, nor dare to sin:
Commune with your own heart; be still;
The Lord requireth truth within,
The sacrifice of mind and will.
O LORD, our King, how excellent,
Thy name on earth is known!
Thy glory in the firmament
How wonderfully shown!
Yet are the humble dear to Thee;
Thy praises are confest
By infants lisping on the knee,
And sucklings at the breast.
When I behold the heavens on high,
The work of thy right hand;
The moon and stars amid the sky,
Thy lights in every land:
Lord, what is man, that thou shouldst deign On him to set thy love,
Give him on earth awhile to reign,
Then fill a throne above?
O Lord, how excellent thy name!
How manifold thy ways!
Let Time thy saving truth proclaim,
Eternity thy praise.
THE Lord is in his holy place
And from his throne on high
He looks upon the human race
With omnipresent eye.
He proves the righteous, marks their path;
In Him the weak are strong;
But violence provokes his wrath,
The Lord abhorreth wrong.
God on the wicked will rain down
Brimstone, and fire, and snares; The gloom and tempest of his frown -This portion shall be theirs.
The righteous Lord will take delight
Alone in righteousness;
The just are pleasing in his sight,
The humble He will bless.
WHILE many cry, in Nature's night,
Ah! who will show the way to bliss?
Lord, lift on us thy saving light-
We seek no other guide than this.
Gladness thy sacred presence brings,
More than the joyful reaper knows; Or he who treads the grapes, and sings, While with new wine his vat o'erflows.
In peace I lay me down to sleep;
Thine arm, O Lord, shall stay my head; Thine angel spread his tent, and keep
His midnight watch around my bed.
THY glory, Lord, the heavens declare,
The firmament displays thy skill;
The changing clouds, the viewless air,
Tempest and calm, thy word fulfil;
Day unto day doth utter speech,
And night to night thy knowledge teach
Though voice nor sound inform the ear,
Well-known the language of their song,
When one by one the stars appear,
Led by the silent moon along,
Till round the earth, from all the sky,
Thy beauty beams on every eye.
Waked by thy touch, the morning sun Comes like a bridegroom from his bower, And, like a giant, glad to run
His bright career with speed and power;
-Thy flaming messenger, to dart
Life through the depth of Nature's heart.
While these transporting visions shine
Along the path of Providence,
Glory eternal, joy divine,
Thy word reveals, transcending sense;
-My soul thy goodness longs to see,
Thy love to man, thy love to me.
THY law is perfect, Lord of light,
Thy testimonies sure,
The statutes of thy realm are right, And thy commandments pure.
Holy, inviolate thy fear,
Enduring as thy throne;
Thy judgments, chastening or severe, Justice and truth alone.
More prized than gold,—than gold whose waste
Refining fire expels ;
Sweeter than honey to my taste,
Than honey from the cells.
Let these, O God, my soul convert,
And make thy servant wise;
Let these be gladness to my heart,
The day-spring to mine eyes.
By these may I be warn'd betimes;
Who knows the guile within?
Lord, save me from presumptuous crimes,
Cleanse me from secret sin.
So may the words my lips express,
The thoughts that throng my mind,
O Lord, my strength and righteousness!
With thee acceptance find.
THE Lord is my shepherd, no want shall I know;
I feed in green pastures, safe-folded I rest:
He leadeth my soul where the still waters flow,
Restores me when wandering, redeems when op-
prest.
Through the valley and shadow of death though I stray,
Since thou art my guardian, no evil I fear;
Thy rod shall defend me, thy staff be my stay,
No harm can befall, with my Comforter near.
In the midst of affliction my table is spread;
With blessings unmeasured my cup runneth o'er,
With perfume and oil thou anointest my head;
what shall I ask of thy providence more?
Let goodness and mercy, my bountiful God,
Still follow my steps till I meet thee above;
I seek,-by the path which my forefathers trod Through the land of their sojourn,-thy kingdom of love.
THE earth is thine, Jehovah,-thine
Its peopled realms and wealthy stores;
Built on the flood, by power divine,
The waves are ramparts to the shores.
But who shall reach thine holy place,
Or who, O Lord, ascend thine hill?
The pure in heart shall see thy face,
The perfect man that doth thy will. He who to bribes hath closed his hand, To idols never bent the knee, Nor sworn in falsehood, he shall stand Redeem'd, and own'd, and kept by Thee
LIFT up your heads, ye gates, and wide
Your everlasting doors display;
Ye angel-guards, like flames divide,
And give the King of Glory way
Who is the King of Glory?—He
The Lord Omnipotent to save, Whose own right-arm in victory
Led captive Death, and spoil'd the grave
Lift up your heads, ye gates, and high
Your everlasting portals heave;
Welcome the King of Glory nigh-
Him let the heaven of heavens receive.
Who is the King of Glory?—who?
The Lord of Hosts-behold his name:
The kingdom, power and honor due
Yield him, ye saints, with glad acclaim.
PSALM XXVII.
No. 1.
GOD is my strong salvation,
What foe have I to fear?
In darkness and temptation
My light, my help, is near:
Though hosts encamp around me,
Firm to the fight I stand;
What terror can confound me,
With God at my right hand?
Place on the Lord reliance,
My soul, with courage wait, His truth be thine affiance,
When faint and desolate :
His might thine heart shall strengthen,
His love thy joy increase;
Mercy thy days shall lengthen-
The Lord will give thee peace.
ONE thing, with all my soul's desire,
I sought and will pursue;
What thine own Spirit doth inspire,
Lord, for thy servant do.
Grant me within thy courts a place,
Among thy saints a seat,
For ever to behold thy face,
And worship at thy feet :
In thy pavilion to abide
When storms of trouble blow,
And in thy tabernacle hide,
Secure from every foe.
"Seek ye my face; "-without delay,
When thus I hear Thee speak,
My heart would leap for joy, and say,
Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
Then leave me not when griefs assail,
And earthly comforts flee;
When father, mother, kindred fail,
My God, remember me.
Oft had I fainted, and resign'd
Of every hope my hold,
But mine afflictions brought to mind
Thy benefits of old.
Wait on the Lord, with courage wait;
My soul, disdain to fear;
The righteous Judge is at the gate,
And thy redemption near.
GIVE glory to God in the highest give praise,
Ye noble, ye mighty, with joyful accord;
All-wise are his counsels, all-perfect his ways:
In the beauty of holiness worship the Lord.
The voice of the Lord on the ocean is known,
The God of eternity thundereth abroad;
The voice of the Lord, from the depth of his throne,
Is terror and power:-all nature is awed.
At the voice of the Lord the cedars are bow'd,
And towers from their base into ruin are hurl'd; The voice of the Lord, from the dark-bosom'd cloud, Dissevers the lightning in flames o'er the world.
see Lebanon bound, like the kid on his rocks,
And wild as the unicorn Sirion appear;
The wilderness quakes with the resonant shocks;
The hinds cast their young in the travail of fear.
PSALM XXXIX.
LORD, let me know mine end, My days, how brief their date, That I may timely comprehend How frail my best estate.
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