THOUGHT ON THE SEASONS. FLATTERED with promise of escape From every hurtful blast, Spring takes, O sprightly May! thy shape, Less fair is Summer riding high, When earth repays with golden sheaves What pensive beauty Autumn shows, Before she hears the sound Of Winter rushing in to close Such be our Spring, our Summer such; With hoary Winter, and life touch TO THE SUPREME BEING. THE prayers I make will then be sweet indeed, That of its native self can nothing feed; Of good and pious works Thou art the seed, That quickens only where Thou sayest it may : Unless Thou show to us thy own true way, No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead: Do Thou then breathe these thoughts into my mind, By which such virtue may in me be bred, The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind, JEHOVAH THE PROVIDER. AUTHOR of being! life-sustaining King! Lo! Want's dependant eye from Thee implores The seasons, which provide nutritious stores; Give to her prayers the renovating Spring, And Summer-heats all perfecting that bring The fruits which Autumn from a thousand stores Her God, and all her vales exulting sing. Bends to the ploughman's galling yoke in vain ; Without thy blessing on the varied year, Can the swarth reaper grasp the golden grain? THE KIRK OF ULPHA1. THE KIRK OF ULPHA to the Pilgrim's eye Of a black cloud diffused o'er half the sky: O'er the parched waste, beside an Arab's tent; Or the Indian tree, whose branches downward bent, Take root again, a boundless canopy. Ulpha is a small village on the river Duddon, in the south of Cumberland. How sweet were leisure! could it yield no more Of distant moon-lit mountains faintly shine, LATIMER AND RIDLEY. How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled! Of faith, stand coupled for a common flight! And thus they foil their enemy's despite. Are glorified, while this once mitred pair JEWEL AND HOOKER. HOLY and heavenly spirits as they are, Spotless in life, and eloquent as wise, Their new-born church! labouring with earnest care |