VI. Lives there a man whose sole delights VII. A soul so pitiably forlorn, VIII. Alas! that such perverted zeal Should spread on Britain's favoured ground! Should e'er have felt or feared a wound From champions of the desperate law Which from their own blind hearts they draw; Who tempt their reason to deny God, whom their passions dare defy, And boast that they alone are free Who reach this dire extremity! IX. But turn we from these 'bold bad' men; 6 Is all too rough for Thee to tread. Down Rydal-cove from Fairfield's side, Who means to charity no wrong; Whose offering gladly would accord With this day's work, in thought and word. X. Heaven prosper it! may peace, and love, And hope, and consolation, fall, Through its meek influence, from above, To kneel together, and adore their God! 1823. XXXIV. ON THE SAME OCCASION. Oh! gather whencesoe'er ye safely may Our churches, invariably perhaps, stand east and west, but why is by few persons exactly known; nor, that the degree of deviation from due east often noticeable in the ancient ones was determined, in each particular case, by the point in the horizon, at which the sun rose upon the day of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. These observances of our ancestors, and the causes of them, are the subject of the following stanzas. WHEN in the antique age of bow and spear Then, to her Patron Saint a previous rite He rose, and straight-as by divine command, They, who had waited for that sign to trace Their work's foundation, gave with careful hand To the high altar its determined place; Mindful of Him who in the Orient born There lived, and on the cross his life resigned, So taught their creed ;- -nor failed the eastern sky, 'Mid these more awful feelings, to infuse The sweet and natural hopes that shall not die, For us hath such prelusive vigil ceased; Whence the tall window drinks the morning rays; That obvious emblem giving to the eye 1823. |