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If any sparkles than the rest more bright;
'Tis she that shines in that propitious1 light!

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground:
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat,

The judging God shall close the book of fate;
And there the last assizes keep,

For those who wake and those who sleep:
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing,
Like mountain larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learnt below.

THREE CONTEMPORARY SONGS

I. THE RETREAT

HAPPY those early days, when I
Shined in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space

Could see a glimpse of His bright face;

1 The rising of the constellation of the Pleiades was looked upon by the ancients as an indication of safe navigation.

When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;

Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,

But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back,

And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train ;
From whence th' enlightened spirit sees
That shady City of Palm-trees!
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way:
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move ;
And, when this dust falls to the urn,

In that same state I came, return.

HENRY VAUGHAN

II. A SUPPLICATION

AWAKE, awake, my lyre!

And tell thy silent master's humble tale
In sounds that may prevail;

Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:

Though so exalted she

And I so lowly be,

Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

Hark! how the strings awake:

And, though the moving hand approach not near,
Themselves with awful fear

A kind of numerous trembling make.

Now all thy forces try;

Now all thy charms apply;

Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak lyre! thy virtue sure
Is useless here, since thou art only found
To cure, but not to wound,

And she to wound, but not to cure.
Too weak, too, wilt thou prove

My passion to remove ;

Physic to other ills, thou 'rt nourishment to love.

Sleep, sleep again, my lyre!
For thou canst never tell my humble tale
In sounds that will prevail,

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;

All thy vain mirth lay by,

Bid thy strings silent lie,

Sleep, sleep again, my lyre, and let thy master die.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

III. SONG OF THE EMIGRANTS IN BERMUDA

WHERE the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along
The listening winds received this song:

"What should we do but sing His praise That led us through the watery maze,

Where He the huge sea monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs,
Unto an isle so long unknown,

And yet far kinder than our own?

He lands us on a grassy stage,

Safe from the storm's and prelate's rage :

He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows:
He makes the figs our mouths to meet
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples plants of such a price
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars chosen by His hand
From Lebanon He stores the land. .
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
O let our voice His praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which then perhaps, rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay!"

Thus sung they in the English boat
A holy and a cheerful note:
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

ANDREW MARVELL

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Joseph Hall, 1574-1656, Bishop of Norwich; theologian; author of "Divine Meditations."

John Selden, 1584-1654, politician and antiquarian; his best thought is embodied in his "Table Talk."

Izaak Walton, 1593-1683, left several brief biographies, and "The Complete Angler."

Sir William Davenant, 1605-1668, poet, controversialist and dramatist; his best-known poem is "Gondibert."

Sir Thomas Browne, 1605-1682, physician, and theologian; author of "Essays on Vulgar Errors" and other works.

Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, English clergyman; his more important works are "Church History," and "The Worthies of England and Wales."

Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1674, Lord Chancellor of England; wrote "A History of the Great Rebellion." James Harrington, 1611-1677, diplomatist and political philosopher; author of "A Project for the Establishment of a Republic," "Oceana," and other works.

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