LXXXVI.

How few and evil are thy days,
Man, of a woman born!

Trouble and peril haunt thy ways:
-Forth like a flower at morn,
The tender infant springs to light;
Youth blossoms with the breeze;
Age, withering age, is cropt ere night;
-Man like a shadow flees.

And dost Thou look on such an one? Will God to judgment call

A worm, for what a worm hath done
Against the Lord of all?

As fail the waters from the deep,
As summer brooks run dry,

Man lieth down in dreamless sleep;
-Our life is vanity.

Man lieth down, no more to wake,
Till yonder arching sphere
Shall with a roll of thunder break,
And nature disappear.

-O hide me till thy wrath be past,
Thou, who canst kill or save;

Hide me, where hope may anchor fast, In my Redeemer's grave,

LXXXVII.

HARK! the song of jubilee,
Loud as mighty thunders roar,
Or the fulness of the sea,
When it breaks upon the shore:-
Hallelujah! for the Lord

God omnipotent shall reign;
Hallelujah!-let the word

Echo round the earth and main.

Hallelujah!-hark! the sound,
From the abysses to the skies,
Wakes above, beneath, around,
All creation's harmonies:
See Jehovah's banner furl'd,

Sheath'd his sword!-He speaks,-'tis done;

And the kingdoms of this worid

Are the kingdoms of his Son.

He shall reign from pole to pole,
With illimitable sway;

He shall reign, when, like a scroll,
Yonder heavens have pass'd away:
Then the end;-beneath his rod,
Man's last enemy shall fall;
Hallelujah! Christ in God,
God in Christ, is all in all.

LXXXVIII.

FRIEND after friend departs;
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
That finds not here an end;
Were this frail world our final rest,
Living or dying, none were blest.

Beyond the flight of time,

Beyond the reign of death,—
There surely is some blessed clime
Where life is not a breath;
Nor life's affections, transient fire,
Whose sparks fly upwards and expire!

There is a world above,

Where parting is unknown;
A long eternity of love,

Formed for the good alone;
And faith beholds the dying, here,
Translated to that glorious sphere !

Thus star by star declines,
Till all are past away:

As morning high and higher shines,
To pure and perfect day:

Nor sink those stars in empty night,

But hide themselves in heaven's own light.

LXXXIX.

THIS shadow on the dial's face,
That steals from day to day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,
Moments, and months, and years away ;
This shadow, which, in every clime,
Since light and motion first began,
Hath held its course sublime;

What is it? mortal man!

It is the scythe of time:
-A shadow only to the eye;

Yet, in its calm career,

It levels all beneath the sky;

And still, through each succeeding year,
Right onward, with resistless power,
Its stroke shall darken every hour,

Till nature's race be run,

And time's last shadow shall eclipse the sun.

Nor only o'er the dial's face,

This silent phantom, day by day, With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,

Steals moments, months, and years away; From hoary rock, and aged tree,

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls, From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea, From every blade of grass, it falls ; For still where'er a shadow sweeps, The scythe of time destroys, And man at every footstep weeps O'er evanescent joys;

Life's flowerets glittering with the dews of morn,
Fair for a moment, then for ever shorn:
-Ah! soon, beneath the inevitable blow,
I too shall lie, in dust and darkness low.

Then time, the conqueror, will suspend
His scythe, a trophy, on my tomb,
Whose moving shadow shall portend
Each frail beholder's doom.
O'er the wide earth's illumined space,
Though time's triumphant flight be shown,-
The truest index on its face,

Points from the churchyard stone.

XC.

I ASK'D the heavens ;-" What foe to God hath done "This unexampled deed?"—the heavens exclaim, ""Twas man ;-and we in horror snatch'd the sun "From such a spectacle of guilt and shame."

I ask'd the sea;—the sea in fury boil'd,

And answer'd with his voice of storms,-" "Twas man ; "My waves in panic at his crime recoil'd, "Disclosed the abyss, and from the centre ran."

I ask'd the earth;-the earth replied aghast, ""Twas man; and such strange pangs my bosom rent, "That still I groan and shudder at the past." -To man, gay, smiling, thoughtless man, I went, And ask'd him next: he turn'd a scornful eye, Shook his proud head, and deign'd me no reply.