AN ODE WHICH WAS PREFIXED TO A LITTLE PRAYER-BOOK GIVEN TO A YOUNG GENTLEWOMAN

Lo, here a little volume, but great book!

(Fear it not, sweet,

It is no hypocrite),

Much larger in itself than in its look.

A nest of new-born sweets,

Whose native fires, disdaining

To lie thus folded, and complaining

Of these ignoble sheets,

Affect more comely bands,

Fair one, from thy kind hands,

And confidently look

To find the rest

Of a rich binding in your breast!

It is, in one choice handful, heaven; and all
Heaven's royal host, encamped thus small
To prove that true, schools use to tell,
Ten thousand angels in one point can dwell.
It is love's great artillery,

Which here contracts itself, and comes to lie
Close-couched in your white bosom; and from thence,
As from a snowy fortress of defense,

Against the ghostly foe to take your part,

And fortify the hold of your chaste heart.

It is the armory of light;

Let constant use but keep it bright,
You'll find it yields

To holy hands and humble hearts
More swords and shields

Than sin hath snares, or hell hath darts.

Only be sure

The hands be pure

That hold these weapons;

and the eyes

Those of turtles, chaste and true,

Wakeful and wise,

Here is a friend shall fight for you;

Hold but this book before your heart,—

Let prayer alone to play his part.

But, O! the heart

That studies this high art

Must be a sure house-keeper,

And yet no sleeper.

Dear soul, be strong;

Mercy will come ere long,

And bring her bosom fraught with blessings,Flowers of never-fading graces,

To make immortal dressings

For worthy souls, whose wise embraces
Store up themselves for Him Who is alone
The Spouse of virgins, and the Virgin's Son.
But if the noble Bridegroom, when He come,
Shall find the wandering heart from home,
Leaving her chaste abode
To gad abroad,

Amongst the gay mates of the god of flies
To take her pleasure, and to play
And keep the Devil's holiday;

To dance in the sunshine of some smiling,
But beguiling

Spheres of sweet and sugared lies,
Some slippery pair

Of false, perhaps, as fair,

Flattering, but forswearing, eyes;
Doubtless some other heart

Will get the start

Meanwhile, and, stepping in before,
Will take possession of that sacred store
Of hidden sweets, and holy joys-
Words which are not heard with ears
(These tumultuous shops of noise),
Effectual whispers, whose still voice
The soul itself more feels than hears;
Amorous languishments, luminous trances,
Sights which are not seen with eyes,
Spiritual and soul-piercing glances,
Whose pure and subtle lightning flies

Prayer

Home to the heart, and sets the house on fire,
And melts it down in sweet desire;

Yet doth not stay

To ask the window's leave to pass that way;
Delicious deaths, soft exhalations

Of soul, dear and divine annihilations;
A thousand unknown rites

Of joys, and rarefied delights;

An hundred thousand loves and graces,

And many a mystic thing,

Which the divine embraces

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Of the dear Spouse of spirits, with them will bring,
For which it is no shame

That dull mortality must not know a name.

If, when He come,

He find the heart from home,

Doubtless He will unload

Himself some otherwhere,

And pour abroad

His precious sweets

On the fair soul whom first He meets.
O fair! O fortunate! O rich! O dear!
O happy and thrice-happy she,

Selected dove,

Whoe'er she be,

Whose early love

With winged vows

Makes haste to meet her morning Spouse,

And close with His immortal kisses!

Happy, indeed, who never misses

To improve that precious hour,
And every day

Seize her sweet prey,

All fresh and fragrant as He rises,
Dropping, with a balmy shower,
A delicious dew of spices.
O, let the blissful heart hold fast
Her heavenly armful; she shall taste

At once ten thousand paradises!
She shall have power

To rifle and deflower

The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets
Which, with a swelling bosom, there she meets;
Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures
Of pure inebriating pleasures;
Happy proof! she shall discover
What joy, what bliss,

How many heavens at once it is
To have her God become her lover.

Richard Crashaw [1613?-1649]

PROVIDENCE

Lo, the lilies of the field,

How their leaves instruction yield!

Hark to Nature's lesson given

By the blessed birds of heaven!
Every bush and tufted tree
Warbles sweet philosophy:
Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow,
God provideth for the morrow.

Say, with richer crimson glows

The kingly mantle than the rose?

Say, have kings more wholesome fare

Than we citizens of air?

Barns nor hoarded grain have we,

Yet we carol merrily.

Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow,
God provideth for the morrow.

One there lives, whose guardian eye
Guides our humble destiny;
One there lives, who, Lord of all,
Keeps our feathers lest they fall.

Pass we blithely then the time,
Fearless of the snare and lime,

Free from doubt and faithless sorrow:

God provideth for the morrow.

Reginald Heber [1783-1826]

My Legacy

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CONSIDER

CONSIDER

The lilies of the field, whose bloom is brief

We are as they;

Like them we fade away,

As doth a leaf.

Consider

The sparrows of the air, of small account:
Our God doth view

Whether they fall or mount-
He guards us too.

Consider

The lilies, that do neither spin nor toil,

Yet are most fair

What profits all this care,

And all this coil?

Consider

The birds, that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;
God gives them food-

Much more our Father seeks

To do us good.

Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894]

MY LEGACY

THEY told me I was heir: I turned in haste,

And ran to seek my treasure,

And wondered, as I ran, how it was placed,-
If I should find a measure

Of gold, or if the titles of fair lands

And houses would be laid within my hands.

I journeyed many roads; I knocked at gates;

I spoke to each wayfarer

I met, and said, “A heritage awaits

Me. Art not thou the bearer