PAIN AND SICKNESS.

INCE 'tis God's will-pain, take your

course;

Exert on me your utmost force;

I well God's truth and promise know: He never sends a woe,

But His supports divine

In due proportion with the affliction join.

Though I am frailest of mankind,

And apt to waver in the wind;

Though me no feeble, bruisèd reed.

In weakness can exceed ;

My soul on God relies,

And I your fierce, redoubled shocks despise.

Patient, resign'd, and humble wills

Impregnably resist all ills:

My God will guide me by His light,
Give me victorious might;

No pang can me invade,

Beneath His wing's propitious shade.

BISHOP KEN.

1637-1710.

THE LOVER

TO HIS MISTRESS GOING TO SEA.

AREWELL, fair saint-may not the sea and wind

Swell like the hearts and eyes you leave
behind;

But, calm and gentle as the looks you bear,
Smile in your face and whisper in your ear.
Let no bold billow offer to arise,

That it may never look upon your eyes;
Lest wind and wave, enamour'd of your form,
Should throng and crowd themselves into a storm.
But if it be your fate, vast seas, to love,

Of my becalmèd breast learn how to move;
Move then, but in a gentle lover's pace,
No furrows nor no wrinkles in your face;
And ye, fierce winds! see that you tell your
In such a breath as may but fill her sail :
So, whilst ye court her each your several way,
Ye may her safely to her port convey;
And love but in a noble way of wooing,
Whilst both contribute to your own undoing.

tale

"Ayres and Dialogues:" Henry Lawes.

TO PARENTS WHO HAVE LOST THEIR

CHILDREN.

HOSE eyes whereon I loved to look,
The voices which made glad mine

ear,

Are out of sight and hearing took,
And shall no more delight me here.

I am a plant whose leaves are cropp'd,
Whose pleasant fruit is pluck'd away;
Whose hopeful branches down are lopp'd,
And left without a living spray.

To call me Father, none is left :

My songs to mournful tunes are made;
And all the pleasures are bereft

Which in a child I might have had.

Yet all rejoicing is not gone;
For, in my sorrows, comforts be:
Because the soul which I bemoan
Is found of God, though lost to me.

GEORGE WITHER.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE.

YSELF am centre of my circling thought;

Only myself I study, learn, and know.

I know my body's of so frail a kind

As force without, fevers within, can kill : I know the heavenly nature of my mind; But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will.

I know my soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all :

I know I'm one of Nature's little kings,

Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

I know my life's a pain, and but a span ;
I know my sense is mock'd in every thing;
And to conclude, I know myself a Man,
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

SIR JOHN DAVIS.

1570-1626.

LOVE AND DISCIPLINE.

INCE in a land not barren, still
(Because Thou dost Thy grace distil)
My lot is fall'n, blest be Thy will!

And since these biting frosts but kill
Some tares in me, which choke or spill
That seed Thou sow'st, blest be Thy skill!

Blest be Thy dew, and blest Thy frost;
And happy I, to be so crost

And cured by crosses, at Thy cost.

The dew doth cheer what is distrest,
The frosts ill weeds nip and molest;
In both Thou work'st unto the best :-

Thus, while Thy several mercies plot
And work on me, now cold, now hot,
The work goes on and slacketh not:

For, as Thy hand the weather steers,
So thrive I best 'twixt joys and fears,
And all the year have some green ears.
HENRY VAUGHAN.