WHEN WE PUT OFF OUR APPAREL.

S ere I down am couchéd there,

Where now I hope to rest,

I first from what I daily wear,
Begin to be undrest;

So in my grave ere I shall be

In bleft reposure laid,

Of many rags yet worn by me
I must be disarray'd.

My fruitless hopes, my foolish fears,
My luft, my lofty pride,

My fleshly joys, my needless cares,
Muft quite be laid aside.

Yea, that self-love which yet I wear

More near me than my fkin,
Muft off be pluck'd ere I fhall dare
My laft long fleep begin.

Of these and all such rags as these,
When I am disarray'd,

My soul and body shall have ease,
Wherever I am laid:

Nor fears of death, nor cares of life,
Shall then disquiet me;

Nor dreaming joys, nor waking grief,
My fleep's disturbance be.

Therefore instruct Thou me, O God!
And give me grace to heed

With what vain things ourselves we load,
And what we rather need.

Oh, help me tear those clouts away,

And let them so be loathed ; That I on my last rifing day With glory may be clothed.

And now when I am naked laid,
Vouchsafe me so to arm,

That nothing make my heart afraid,
Or do my body harm.

And guard me so when down I lie,
And when I rise again;

That fleep or wake, or live or die,

I ftill may safe remain.

LOVE.

LOVE.

ILL love appear, we live in anxious doubt;

But out; TILL

smoke will vanish when that flame breaks

This is the fire that would consume our drofs,

Refine and make us richer by the loss.
Could we forbear dispute and practise love,
We should agree as angels do above.
Where love prefides, not vice alone does find
No entrance there, but virtues stay behind.
Both Faith and Hope, and all the meaner train
Of moral virtues, at the door remain;
Love only enters as a native there,
For, born in heaven, it does but sojourn here.
Weak though we are, to love is no hard task,
And love for love is all that Heaven does ask.
Love, that would all men just and temperate make,
Kind to themselves and others, for his sake.
'Tis with our minds as with a fertile ground,
Wanting this love, they must with weeds abound:
Unruly paffions, whose effects are worse

Than thorns and thiftles springing from the curse.
Edmund Waller. 1605-1687.

L

LITTLE CHILDREN.

OVE divine its word hath spoken;
Hath its life expreffed ;-

To the earnest, seeking spirit,

It hath given a test, Marking the inheritors

Of its heavenly rest.

Oh, the bleffing, the rich bleffing!

Is it thine and mine?

Who are they, the true recipients
Of the Love Divine?
Little children, little children!

Not in years alone

Little children in the spirit,

These He calls his own.

Have ye love, like little children?
Have ye faith as they?

Do your angels, near the Father,
See his face alway?

Then are ye within the kingdom!
Hold the bleffing up!

This the "myftic hydrome

In life's golden cup.

'T was o'erturned when Eden's exiles

Closed the garden door,

But refilled again, forever
Running o'er and o'er,

With a new, divine elixir,
Emanating power,

Circling life with noble meaning

And angelic lore,

When the Holy Dove descended

Upon Jordan's fhore.

Little children, young and aged,

Bear the bleffing up!

Pour around the life elixir,

From your golden cup!
Love is the divine reftorer
Of the souls of men;
This the new, perpetual Eden
We must seek again.

Love is the eternal childhood;

Hither all must come,

Who the kingdom would inherit

Of the Heavenly Home.