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Of all the glories make noon gay,

This is the morn,

This rock buds forth the fountain of the streams of day,

In joy's white annals lives this hour

When life was born,

No cloud scowl on his radiant lids, no tempest lour.

Life, by this Light's nativity,

All creatures have,

Death only by this day's just doom is forc'd to die :
Nor is death forc'd; for may he lie
Thron'd in thy grave,

Death will on this condition be content to die.

CHORUS OF THE SHEPHERDS OF

BETHLEHEM.

WELCOME all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span,

Summer in winter, day in night,

Heaven in earth, and God in man ;
Great little one! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heav'n, stoops heav'n to earth.

Welcome! though not to gold nor silk,
To more than Cæsar's birthright is ;
Two sister seas of virgin milk,

With many a rarely-temper'd kiss

That breathes at once both maid and mother,
Warms in the one, cools in the other.

She sings thy tears asleep, and dips
Her kisses in thy weeping eye;
She spreads the red leaves of thy lips,
That in their buds yet blushing lie;
She 'gainst those mother diamonds tries
The points of her young eagle's eyes.

Welcome! though not to those gay flies
Gilded i' th' beams of earthly kings,
Slippery souls in smiling eyes,

But to poor shepherds, homespun things, Whose wealth's their flock; whose wit to be Well read in their simplicity.

Yet when young April's husband-showers
Shall bless the fruitful Maia's bed,
We'll bring the first-born of her flowers
To kiss thy feet, and crown thy head.
To thee, dread Lamb! whose love must keep
The shepherds more than they their sheep.

To thee, meek Majesty! soft King
Of simple graces and sweet loves,
Each of us his lamb will bring,

Each his pair of silver doves,

Till burnt at last in fire of thy fair eyes,
Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.

EPITAPH UPON HUSBAND AND WIFE WHO
DIED AND WERE BURIED TOGETHER.

To these, whom death again did wed,
This grave's their second marriage-bed.

For though the hand of Fate could force "Twixt soul and body a divorce,

It could not sunder man and wife,
'Cause they both lived but one life.
Peace, good reader, do not weep;
Peace, the lovers are asleep :
They (sweet turtles) folded lie,
In the last knot love could tie.

And though they lie as they were dead,
Their pillow stone, their sheets of lead,
(Pillow hard, and sheets not warm);
Love made the bed, they'll take no harm.
Let them sleep, let them sleep on,
Till this stormy night be gone,
And th' eternal morrow dawn;
Then the curtains will be drawn,
And they wake into that light
Whose day shall never die in night.

EPITAPH ON MR ASHTON.

THE modest front of this small floor,
Believe me, reader, can say more
Than many a braver marble can,
Here lies a truly honest man;
One whose conscience was a thing,
That troubled neither church nor king:
One of those few that, in this town,
Honour all preachers, hear their own.
Sermons he heard, yet not so many
As left no time to practise any.
He heard them reverendly, and then
His practice preach'd them o'er again.

His parlour sermons rather were
Those to the eye than to the ear.

His prayers took their price and strength,
Not from the loudness, nor the length.
He was a Protestant at home,

Not only in despite of Rome.
He lov'd his father; yet his zeal
Tore not off his mother's veil.

To the church he did allow her dress,
True beauty to true holiness.

Peace, which he lov'd in life, did lend
Her hand to bring him to his end.
When age and death call'd for the score,
No surfeits were to reckon for.

Death tore not (therefore); but sans strife
Gently untwin'd his thread of life.
What remains then, but that thou
Write these lines, reader, in thy brow;
And by his fair example's light,
Burn in thy imitation bright.

So, while these lines can but bequeath
A life perhaps unto his death,
His better epitaph shall be,

His life still kept alive in thee.

HYMN OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT.

RISE, royal Sion! Rise and sing

Thy soul's kind Shepherd, thy heart's King.
Stretch all thy powers, call, if thou can,
Harps of heaven, and hands of man.
This sovereign subject sits above

The best ambitions of thy love.

Lo! the bread of life, this day's
Triumphant text, provokes thy praise;
The living and life-given bread,
To the great twelve distributed,
When Life himself at point to die,
Of love was his own legacy.

Come, Love! and let us work a song,
Loud and pleasant, sweet and long;
Let lips and hearts lift high their noise
Of so just and solemn joys,

Which on his white brows this bright day
Shall hence forever bear away.

Lo! the new law of a new Lord,
With a new Lamb, blesses the board;
The aged Pascha pleads not years,
But spies Love's dawn and disappears.
Types yield to truths, shades shrink away,
And their night dies into our day.

But lest that die too, we are bid
Ever to do what he once did;
And by a mindful mystic breath,
That we may live, revive his death;
With a well-blest bread and wine
Transum'd, and taught to turn divine.

HYMN IN MEDITATION OF THE DAY OF

JUDGMENT.

MERCY, my Judge! mercy I cry,

With blushing cheek and bleeding eye;

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