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Unlike the lark be thou, my

friend!

No downward cares thy thoughts engage,

But in thine house of pilgrimage,

Though from the ground thy songs ascend, Still be their burden joy and love,

Heaven is thy home, thy heart above.

THE FIXED STARS.

REIGN in your heavens, ye stars of light!

Beyond this troubled scene;

With

you, fair orbs ! there is no night,

Eternally serene,

Each casts around its tranquil way,

The radiance of its own clear day;

Yet not unborrow'd. - What are ye?

Mirrors of Deity:

My soul, in your reflective rays,

Him whom no eye hath seen surveys,

As I behold (himself too bright for view)

The sun in every drop of dew.

1

The gloom that brings, through evening skies,

Your beauty from the deep;

The clouds that hide you from our eyes;

The storms that seem to sweep

Your scatter'd train, like vessels tost

On ocean's waves, now seen, now lost;

-Belong to our inferior ball,

Ye shine above them all :

Your splendour noon eclipses not,

Nor night reveals, nor vapours blot;

O'er us, not you, these changes come and pass;

Ye navigate a sea of glass.

Thus, on their hyaline above,

In constellations stand

The tribes redeem'd by sovereign love:

Crown'd, and with harp in hand,

They sing before the great I AM,

The song of Moses and the Lamb;

Returning in perpetual streams

His own all-lightening beams.

- Theirs be thy portion, O

my

soul!

That while heaven's years self-circling roll,

I may, among the ransom'd,—they in me, And I in them, God's image see.

THE LILY.

TO A YOUNG LADY, E. P.

FLOWER of light, forget thy birth,

Daughter of the sordid earth,

Lift the beauty of thine eye

To the blue ethereal sky!

While thy graceful buds unfold

Silver petals starr'd with gold,

Let the bee among thy bells

Rifle their ambrosial cells,

And the nimble-pinion'd air

Waft thy breath to heaven like prayer.

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