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DEATH-THE DYING

DECEIT.

Death is the crown of life;

| What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware As to descry the crafty cunning train

Death wounds to cure; we fall, we rise, we By which deceit doth mask in visor fair,
reign!

Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies.
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost!
This king of terrors is the prince of peace.

YOUNG.

Of death and judgment, heaven and hell,
Who oft do think, must needs die well.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

Go and dig my grave to-day!
Homeward doth my journey tend,
And I lay my staff away

Here where all things earthly end,
And I lay my weary head
In the only painless bed.
Weep not, my Redeemer lives;

Heavenward springing from the dust,
Clear-eyed Hope her comfort gives;
Faith, Heaven's champion, bids us trust;
Love eternal whispers nigh,

"Child of God, fear not to die!"

From the German of E. M. ARNDT.

'Tis a blessing to live, but a greater to die;

And cast her colors dyed deep in grain,

To seem like truth, whose shape she well can
feign,

And fitting gestures to her purpose frame,
The guiltless man with guile to entertain?
SPENSER.

Lie not but let thy heart be true to God,
Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both.
Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod.
HERBERT.

Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie;
A fault, which needs it most, grows two
thereby.
HERBERT.

Falsehood puts on the face of simple truth,
And masks i' th' habit of plain honesty,
When she in heart intends most villany.

"MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES."

O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
WALTER SCOTT.

And the best of the world, is its path to the That love a lie, where truth would pay as

sky.

MITCHELL.

[See also THE DEAD-THE GRAVE.]

well, As if, to them, vice shone her own reward. YOUNG.

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Through these bright orbs' dark centers darts O mighty Spirit! Source whence all things

a ray!

Of nature universal threads the whole!
And hangs creation, like a precious gem,
Though little, on the footstool of his throne.

YOUNG.

Stupendous Architect! thou, thou art all!
My soul flies up and down in thoughts
thee,

And finds herself but at the center still!
"I AM," thy name! existence all thine own!
Creation's nothing; flattered much, if styled,
"The thin and fleeting atmosphere of God."
YOUNG.

of

Hail, Source of being! Universal Soul
Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence,

hail!

sprung!

O glorious Majesty of perfect Light!
Hath ever worthy praise to thee been sung,

Or mortal heart endured to meet thy sight?

If they who sin have never known
Must vail their faces at thy throne,

O how shall I, who am but sin and dust,
Approach untrembling to the Pure and Just?
From the German of RAMBACH.

O God! thou bottomless abyss!
Thee to perfection who can know?
O height immense! what words suffice
Thy countless attributes to show?
Eternity thy fountain was,

Which, like thee, no beginning knew;
Thou wast ere Time began its race,

Ere glowed with stars th' ethereal blue.

To thee I bend the knee; to thee my Greatness unspeakable is thine;

thoughts

Continual climb, who with a master hand,
Hast the great whole into perfection touched.

THOMSON.

Greatness whose undiminished ray,
When short-lived worlds are lost, shall shine
When earth and heaven are fled away.

JOHN WESLEY.

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Thou only God! there is no God beside!

Being above all beings! mighty One,

Exhaustless Treasure! Being limitless!
What gaze hath ever pierced thy deep abyss?
Deep Fount of life! Light inaccessible!
How great thy power, O God! what tongue
can tell?

Thy Christendom is singing night and day,
"Glory to Him, the mighty God, for aye,
By whom, through whom, in whom all beings

are!"

Grant us to echo on this song afar!

From the German of J. FRANCK.

[See also DIVINE LOVE-OMNIPOTENCE —

PROVIDENCE.]

DELAY-PROCRASTINATION.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace, from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

In delay,

SHAKSPEARE.

We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.

SHAKSPEARE.

That comfort comes too late;

'Tis like a pardon after execution.

SHAKSPEARE.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Whom none can comprehend and none ex- Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

plore!

Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone;

Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er!

SHAKSPEARE.

Being whom we call God, and know no more! The means that Heaven yields must be em

From the Russian of DERZHAVIN.

Author of being, Source of light,
With unfading beauties bright,
Fullness, goodness, rolling round
Thy own fair orb without a bound;
Whether Thee thy suppliants call
Truth, or Good, or One, or All,
Ei or Jao! Thee we hail,
Essence that can never fail,
Grecian or Barbaric name,

Thy steadfast being still the same.
S. WESLEY.

braced,

And not neglected; else if Heaven would, And we will not, Heaven's offer we refuse. SHAKSPEARE.

Where is to-morrow? in another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this "perhaps,"
This "peradventure," infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build

Our mountain-hopes, spin out eternal schemes.
YOUNG.

DELAY.

91

To-morrow

The fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward, and the fool, condemned to lose
A useless life in waiting for to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect;
Strange, that this general fraud, from day to
day,

DR. JOHNSON.

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Should fill the world with wretches unde- It is a period nowhere to be found
tected.
In all the hoary registers of time,
Unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.
Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society
With those that own it.

Shun delays, they breed remorse;
Take thy time while time doth serve thee;
Creeping snails have weakest force,
Fly their fault lest thou repent thee;
Good is best when soonest wrought,
Lingering labors come to naught.
Hoist up sail while gale doth last,

Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure;
Seek not time when time is past,

Sober speed is wisdom's leisure.

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DELAY-THE DELUGE.

Delay not, sinner, till the hour of pain
To seek repentance; pain is absolute,
Exacting all the body and the brain,

Humanity's stern king, from head to foot. How canst thou pray when fevered arrows shoot

Through this torn targe, while every bone doth ache,

Hark! hark! the sea bird's cry!

In clouds they overspread the lurid sky,
And hover round the mountain, where before
Never a white wing, wetted by the wave,
Yet dared to soar,

Even when the waters waxed too fierce to
brave;

Soon shall it be their only shore.

And the scared mind raves up and down And then, no more!

her cell,

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BYRON.

Rests upon Ararat; but nought around
Its inmates can behold, save o'er the expanse
Of boundless waters, the sun's orient orb
Stretching the hull's long shadow, or the moon
In silence through the silver-curtained clouds
Sailing, as she herself were lost and left
In hollow loneliness.

BOWLES.

Sunk beneath the wave,

The guilty share a universal grave;

One wilderness of waters rolls in view,
And heaven and ocean wear one turbid hue;

THE DELUGE—THE RAINBOW. Methinks I see a distant vessel ride,

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died;

All shall be void,
Destroyed!

And now, the thickening sky

BYRON.

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Upward they toiled the mountain steep,
But the flood came steadily on;
Day gave no rest, the night no sleep,
For the revengeful waves did after them creep,
Till the remnant of hope was gone.

Like a dark ceiling stood; down rushed the A few of the strongest stemmed the flood,

rain

Impetuous, and continued till the earth

No more was seen. The floating vessel swam
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow,
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else
Flood overwhelmed, and them, with all their

pomp,

Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea,
Sea without shore; and in their palaces,
Where luxury late reigned, sea monsters
whelped

Till it covered the mountain top;
Then with failing eye, and thickening blood,
They prayed for mercy from their God,

And the dark wave swallowed them up.
Infants, mothers, husbands, brides,
Beasts and creeping things besides,

All met one common doom;
So that none were left in all the land,
Save those delivered by God's right hand,
As it were in a floating tomb.

W. S. STUDLEY.

And stabled. Of mankind, so numerous late,
All left in one small bottom swam embarked. The rainbow dies in heaven, and not on earth.

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