Opening the text

A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations: Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings; Illustrated by Striking Passages from Scripture, and Forming Altogether a Complete Book of Devotional Poetry.

Religion

A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations: Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings; Illustrated by Striking Passages from Scripture, and Forming Altogether a Complete Book of Devotional Poetry.

Quotations; Religious poetry

Thy nature, _immortality_! who knows?
    And yet who knows it not? It is but life
    In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
    And spun for ever, dipt by cruel fate
    In Stygian die, how black, how brittle here!
    How short our correspondence with the sun!
    And while it lasts, Inglorious! Our best deeds,
    How wanting in their weight! our highest joys,
    Small cordials to support us in our pain,
    And give us strength to suffer. But how great
    To mingle interests, converse, amities,
    With all the sons of reason, scatter’d wide
    Through habitable space, wherever born,
    Howe’er endowed! To live free citizens
    Of universal nature! To lay hold
    By more than feeble faith on the Supreme!
    To call heaven’s rich unfathomable mines
    (Mines, which support archangels in their state,)
    Our own! To rise in science as in bliss,
    Initiate in the secrets of the skies!
    To read creation; read its mighty plan
    In the bare bosom of the Deity!
    The plan, and execution, to collate!
    To see, before each glance of piercing thought,
    All cloud, all shadow blown remote; and leave
    No mystery--but that of love divine,
    Which lifts us on the Seraph’s flaming wing,
    From earth’s aceldama, this field of blood,
    Of inward anguish, and of outward ill,
    From darkness, and from dust, to such a scene!
    Love’s element! True joy’s illustrious house!
    From earth’s sad contrast (now deplor’d) more fair!
    What exquisite vicissitude of fate!
    Blest absolution of our blackest hour!
                                                _Young._


    Man’s soul _immortal_ is; whilst here they live,
    The purest minds for perfect knowledge strive;
    Which is the knowledge of that glorious God,
    From whom all life proceeds: in this abode
    Of flesh, the soul can never reach so high,
    So reason tells us. If the soul then die,
    When from the body’s bonds she takes her flight,
    Her unfulfilled desire is frustrate quite,
    And so bestowed in vain! It follows then,
    The best desires, unto the best of men,
    The Great Creator did in vain dispense,
    Or else the soul must live when gone from hence,
    And if it live after the body fall,
    What reason proves that it must die at all?
                                        _Thomas May._

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Religion

A Cyclopædia of Sacred Poetical Quotations: Consisting of Choice Passages from the Sacred Poetry of All Ages and Countries, Classified and Arranged, for Facility of Reference, Under Subject Headings; Illustrated by Striking Passages from Scripture, and Forming Altogether a Complete Book of Devotional Poetry.

Quotations; Religious poetry

Thy nature, _immortality_! who knows?
    And yet who knows it not? It is but life
    In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
    And spun for ever, dipt by cruel fate
    In Stygian die, how black, how brittle here!
    How short our correspondence with the sun!
    And while it lasts, Inglorious! Our best deeds,
    How wanting in their weight! our highest joys,
    Small cordials to support us in our pain,
    And give us strength to suffer. But how great
    To mingle interests, converse, amities,
    With all the sons of reason, scatter’d wide
    Through habitable space, wherever born,
    Howe’er endowed! To live free citizens
    Of universal nature! To lay hold
    By more than feeble faith on the Supreme!
    To call heaven’s rich unfathomable mines
    (Mines, which support archangels in their state,)
    Our own! To rise in science as in bliss,
    Initiate in the secrets of the skies!
    To read creation; read its mighty plan
    In the bare bosom of the Deity!
    The plan, and execution, to collate!
    To see, before each glance of piercing thought,
    All cloud, all shadow blown remote; and leave
    No mystery--but that of love divine,
    Which lifts us on the Seraph’s flaming wing,
    From earth’s aceldama, this field of blood,
    Of inward anguish, and of outward ill,
    From darkness, and from dust, to such a scene!
    Love’s element! True joy’s illustrious house!
    From earth’s sad contrast (now deplor’d) more fair!
    What exquisite vicissitude of fate!
    Blest absolution of our blackest hour!
                                                _Young._


    Man’s soul _immortal_ is; whilst here they live,
    The purest minds for perfect knowledge strive;
    Which is the knowledge of that glorious God,
    From whom all life proceeds: in this abode
    Of flesh, the soul can never reach so high,
    So reason tells us. If the soul then die,
    When from the body’s bonds she takes her flight,
    Her unfulfilled desire is frustrate quite,
    And so bestowed in vain! It follows then,
    The best desires, unto the best of men,
    The Great Creator did in vain dispense,
    Or else the soul must live when gone from hence,
    And if it live after the body fall,
    What reason proves that it must die at all?
                                        _Thomas May._

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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