Hushed are the forest-beasts, in hunger's spite, They seek not food from GOD, this worse than night, And the earth's echoes answered unto Thee: The Pestilence that in the darkness hides, The Death which wastes at noon day, pass him by; He treads upon the adder, and derides The lion's rage. Thou, Helper! now art nigh, Though he be outpoured like water, tho' his heart Melt forth like wax,-in this extremity. -Thou didst preserve him, when, with curious art, Fearfully wrought in the Earth's lowest part. And Thou art he who thence Thy Chosen took, To Thee, who dying conquerest ... all hail! 66 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied: neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive: But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman: for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Awake, O Sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts: smite the Shepherd and the Sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." ZECHARIAH, Xiii. 4-7. IV. CALVARY. DAY'S second dawn on that portentous noon It brake; and like the blank and quenched Moon, The reappearing Sun on Calvary Rose fearful-pale. Son of the golden Morn, By the great shock wherewith the worlds were torn Them all in one astonishment intense, From its due sphere, a wreck, down rush-advanced Before thy broad and bright circumference And blot thee from between the Heaven and Earth? Or wept thy Seraph so for Man's offence, |