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Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair,
I trust he lives in Thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;

Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in Thy wisdom make me wise.

II.

O, YET We trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete ;

That not a worm is cloven in vain,
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold! we know not any thing;

I can but trust that good shall fall

And

At last, far off, at last, to all,

every

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winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

III.

○ THOU that after toil and storm

May'st seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,

Nor cares to fix itself to form,—

Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.

Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!

See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And even for want of such a type.

IV.

RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times:

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

11

James Montgomery.

1771.

MAN IMMORTAL.

MAN, to this narrow sphere confined,

Dies when he but begins to live.
Oh! if there be no world on high
To yield his powers unfettered scope;
If man be only born to die,
Whence this inheritance of hope?
Wherefore to him alone were lent
Riches that never can be spent?
Enough, not more, to all the rest,
For life and happiness, was given;
To man, mysteriously unblest,
Too much for any state but heaven.

It is not thus;

it cannot be,

That one so gloriously endowed

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