Some men a forward motion love, CHILDHOOD. I CANNOT reach it; and my striving eye Were now that Chronicle alive, Those white designs which children drive, And the thoughts of each harmless hour, With their content too in my power, Quickly would I make my path even, And by mere playing go to Heaven. Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span Where weeping virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he Must live twice that would God's face see; How do I study now, and scan THE WORLD. I SAW eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright: And round beneath it, time in hours, days, years, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world The doting lover in his quaintest strain Near him his lute, his fancy, and his flights,- With gloves and knots, the silly snares of pleasure; All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour The darksome statesman, hung with weights and wo, Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout; Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found, Where he did clutch his prey,—but one did see Churches and altars fed him; perjuries Were gnats and flies; It rained about him blood and tears, but he The fearful miser on a heap of rust Yet would not place one piece above, but lives Thousands there were as frantic as himself, And hugged each one his pelf: The downright epicure placed heaven in sense, While others slipped into a wide excess, The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave, And poor despised truth sat counting by Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, O fools! (said I,) thus to prefer dark night To live in grots and caves, and hate the day, The way which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God; A way where you might tread the sun, and be But as I did their madness thus discuss, One whispered thus: "This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide, But for his Bride." PEACE. My soul there is a country Sweet peace sits crowned with smiles, And one born in a manger Commands the beauteous files. He is thy gracious friend And (O my soul awake!) To die here for thy sake. If thou canst get but thither, There grows Thy fortress, and thy ease. LOOKING BACK. FAIR, shining mountains of my pilgrimage, When I by thought ascend your sunny heads, By which I walked, when curtained rooms and beds O then, how bright, and quick a light GEORGE HERBERT. GEORGE HERBERT, a younger brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was born at the castle of Montgomery, in Wales, on the 3d of April, 1593, and was educated at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. In 1619 he became the university orator, and he held this office eight years. His abilities recommended him to Lord Bacon and to Bishop Andrews, and the king being also pleased with him he had hopes of rising at court; but the death of James and other causes having induced his disappointment, in this quarter, he retired into Kent, where he lived with great privacy, and taking a survey of his past life, determined to devote his remaining years to religion; in his own words, " to consecrate all my learning and all my abilities to advance the glory of that God which gave them, knowing that I can never do too much for Him that hath done so much for me as to make me a Christian." He took orders, was married, and after a few years was presented with the living of Bemerton, near Salisbury, into which he was inducted in 1630. Here he passed the remainder of his days in the faithful discharge of the duties of a parish minister, as delineated by himself in "The Country Parson," and by Izaak Walton in his pleasant biography. He died, of consumption, in February, 1632. Herbert's "Temple, or Sacred Poems," have been many times reprinted in England and in this country. Its popularity when first published was so great that when Walton wrote, more than twenty thousand copies of it had been sold. Baxter says: "I must confess that next the Scripture Poems, there are none so savory to me as our George Herbert's. I know that Cowley and others far excel Herbert in wit and accurate composure; but as Seneca takes with me above all his contemporaries, because he speaketh by words feelingly and seriously, like a man that is past jest, so Herbert speaks to God, like a man that really believeth in God, and whose business in the world is most with God: heart-work and heaven-work make up his books." Coleridge, the best of critics, alludes to Herbert as "the model of a man, a gentleman, and a clergyman," and adds, that "the quaintness of some of his thoughts (not of his diction, than which nothing could be more pure, manly, and unaffected) has blinded modern readers to the great general merit of his poems, which are for the most part excellent in their kind." |