Bitter Sweet.

Ан, my dear, angry Lord!
Since thou dost love,-yet strike;
Cast down,-yet help afford;
Sure, I will do the like.

I will complain,—yet praise;
I will bewail,-approve;
And, all my sour-sweet days,
I will lament,—and love.

The Glance.

WHEN first thy sweet and gracious eye Vouchsafed, even in the midst of youth and night, To look upon me, who, before, did lie

Weltering in sin :

I felt a sugared strange delight, Passing all cordials made by any art, Bedew, embalm, and overrun my heart, And take it in.

Since that time, many a bitter storm My soul hath felt; e'en able to destroy, Had the malicious and ill-meaning harm His swing and sway.

But still, thy sweet original joy,

Sprung from thine eye, did work within my soul, And surging griefs, when they grew bold, control;

And got the day.

If thy first glance so powerful be,—

A mirth but opened and sealed up again,—

What wonders shall we feel, when we shall see Thy full-eyed love!

When thou shalt look us out of pain;

And one aspect of thine spend in delight,
More than a thousand suns disburse in light,
In heaven above!

The Twenty-third Psalm.

THE God of love my Shepherd is,
And he that doth me feed;
While he is mine, and I am his,
What can I want or need?

He leads me to the tender grass,
Where I both feed and rest;
Then to the streams that gently pass.
In both I have the best.

Or, if I stray, he doth convert,

And bring my mind in frame.
And all this, not for my desert,
But for his holy name.

Yea, in death's shady, black abode
Well may I walk, nor fear:
For thou art with me; and thy rod
To guide, thy staff to bear.

Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine,
E'en in my enemies' sight.

My head with oil, my cup with wine
Runs over, day and night.

Surely thy sweet and wondrous love
Shall measure all my days:

And, as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise.

Mary Magdalene.

WHEN blessed Mary wiped her Saviour's feet,
(Whose precepts she had trampled on before,)
And wore them for a jewel on her head;

Shewing, his steps should be the street,
Wherein she thenceforth evermore,

With pensive humbleness, would live and tread:

She being stained herself, why did she strive
To make him clean, who could not be defiled?
Why kept she not her tears for her own faults,

And not his feet? Though we could dive
In tears, like seas; our sins are piled

Deeper than they, in words, and works, and thoughts.

Dear soul, she knew who did vouchsafe and deign
To bear her filth; and that her sins did dash
E'en God himself: wherefore she was not loath,
As she had brought wherewith to stain,
So to bring in wherewith to wash.

And yet, in washing one, she washed both.

Aaron.

HOLINESS on the head;

Light and perfections on the breast;
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead,
To lead them unto life and rest;-
Thus are true Aarons drest.

Profaneness in my head;
Defects and darkness in my breast;
A noise of passions ringing me, for dead,
Unto a place where is no rest;—
Poor priest! thus am I drest.

Only another head

I have; another heart and breast; Another music, making 'live, not dead; Without whom I could have no rest :In him I am well drest.

Christ is my only head;
My alone, only heart and breast;
My only music, striking me e'en dead,
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him, new drest.

So, holy in my head;

Perfect and light in my dear breast;

My doctrine tuned by Christ, who is not dead, But lives in me, while I do rest ;

Come, people; Aaron's drest.

The Odor.-2 COR. ii. 15.

How sweetly doth MY MASTER sound; MY MASTER! As ambergris leaves a rich scent

Unto the taster:

So do these words a sweet content, An oriental fragrancy: MY MASTER!

With these all day I do perfume my mind,
My mind e'en thrust into them both:
That I might find,

What cordials make this curious broth,

This broth of smells, that feeds and fats my mind.

MY MASTER, shall I speak? O, that to thee,
MY SERVANT were a little so,

As flesh may be :

That these two words might creep, and grow To some degree of spiciness to thee!

Then should the pomander, which was before
A speaking sweet, mend by reflection,

And tell me more :

For pardon of my imperfection

Would warm and work it sweeter than before.

For when MY MASTER (which alone is sweet,
And e'en in my unworthiness pleasing)
Shall call, and meet

MY SERVANT, as thee not displeasing;
That call is but the breathing of the sweet