Oh, Love Divine !—whose constant beam And waits to bless us, while we dream Thou leavest us because we turn from thee! All souls that struggle and aspire, All hearts of prayer by thee are lit ; And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, Wide as our needs thy favors fall; The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. JOHN G. WHittier. CHEARFULNESS. LORD, with what courage and delight I doe each thing, When thy least breath sustaines my wing! I shine and move Like those above, And, with much gladnesse Quitting sadnesse, Make me faire dayes of every night. HENRY VAUGHAN. THE LOVE OF GOD. THOU HOU Grace Divine, encircling all, Wherein at last our souls must fall, O Love of God most free! When over dizzy heights we go, And though we turn us from Thy face, Thou hold'st us still in Thine embrace, The saddened heart, the restless soul, But not alone Thy care we claim, And filled and quickened by Thy breath, To rise o'er sin and fear and death, O Love of God, to Thee! ELIZA SCUDDER. I THE ETERNAL GOODNESS. SEE the wrong that round me lies, I hear, with groan and travail-cries, Yet, in the maddening maze of things, Not mine to look where cherubim The wrong that pains my soul below I know not of His hate, — I know His goodness and His love. I dimly guess from blessings known I long for household voices gone, But God hath led my dear ones on, I know not what the future hath Assured alone that life and death And if my heart and flesh are weak The bruised reed He will not break, No offering of my own I have, And so beside the Silent Sea No harm from Him can come to me I know not where His islands lift I only know I cannot drift JOHN G. WHITTIER. HYMN FOR THE MOTHER. Y My child is lying on my knees; The signs of heaven she reads; My face is all the heaven she sees, Is all the heaven she needs. And she is well, yea, bathed in bliss. I mean her well so earnestly, I also am a child, and I Am ignorant and weak ; I gaze upon the starry sky, And then I must not speak; For all behind the starry sky, Behind the world so broad, Behind men's hearts and souls doth lie The Infinite of God. If true to her, though troubled sore, I cannot choose but be, Thou who art peace for evermore, |