IV.

COMFORT AND CHEER.

TO MYSELF.

LET nothing make thee sad or fretful,
Or too regretful;

Be still;

What God hath ordered must be right;
Then find in it thine own delight,

My will.

Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow
About to-morrow,
My heart?

One watches all with care most true;
Doubt not that he will give thee too
Thy part.

Only be steadfast; never waver,
Nor seek earth's favor,
But rest:

Thou knowest what God wills must be

For all his creatures, so for thee,

The best.

From the German of PAUL FLEMING. Translation of CATHERINE WINKWORTH.

THE FLOWER.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away

Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother root, when they have blown; Where they together

All the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amisse

This or that is:

Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groning thither; Nor doth my flower

Want a spring-showre,

My sinnes and I joining together.

But, while I grow in a straight line, Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone Where all things burn,

When thou dost turn,

And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again;

After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be

That I am he

On whom thy tempests fell all night!

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,

Swelling through store,

Forfeit their paradise by their pride.

GEORGE HERBERT.

SONNET.

TO CYRIACK SKINNER.

CYRIACK, this three years' day, these eyes, though

clear,

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot:

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or stars, throughout the year, Or man or woman, yet I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's

vain mask,

Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

MILTON.

INVICTUS.

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.

AFAR IN THE DESERT.

AFAR in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I cling to the past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And shadows of things that have long since fled
Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,-
Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon;
Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments by fate or falsehood reft;
Companions of early days lost or left;
And my native land, whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;

The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime;

All the passions and scenes of that rapturous

time

When the feelings were young, and the world was

new,

Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view; All, all now forsaken, forgotten, foregone!

And I, a lone exile remembered of none,

My high aims abandoned, my good acts undone, Aweary of all that is under the sun,