Enough that blessings undeserved Have marked my erring track, That wheresoe’er my feet have swerved, His chastening turned me back; 40 That more and more a Providence Of love is understood, Making the springs of time and sense Sweet with eternal good; That death seems but a covered way, 45 Which opens into light, Wherein no blinded child can stray Beyond the Father’s sight; That care and trial seem at last, Through memory’s sunset air, 50 Like mountain ranges overpast In purple distance fair; That all the jarring notes of life Seem blending in a psalm, And all the angles of its strife 55 Slow rounding into calm. And so the shadows fall apart, And so the west winds play: And all the windows of my heart I open to this day. 60 _John Greenleaf Whittier._ NOTES. P. 3, No. iii.--There seems no reason to doubt that Sir Walter Raleigh was the author of this poem, and that the initials W. R. with which it appears in Davison’s _Rhapsody_ indicate truly the authorship. It is abundantly worthy of him; there have been seldom profounder thoughts more perfectly expressed than in the fourth and fifth stanzas. A certain obscurity in the poem will demand, but will also repay, study; and for its right understanding we must keep in mind that ‘affection’ is here used as in our English Bible, where it is the rendering of πἁθος (Rom. i. 26; Col. 3, 5), and that ‘affection’ and ‘desire’ are regarded as interchangeable and equivalent. P. 4, No. iv.--See Spedding’s _Works of Lord Bacon_, vol. vii. p. 267 sqq., for the external evidence making it reasonably probable, but certainly not lifting above all doubt, that the ascription of these lines to Lord Bacon is a right one. P. 6, No. vi.--This very remarkable poem first appeared in the second edition of Davison’s _Poetical Rhapsody_, 1608; itself a sufficient disproof of the often-repeated assertion that Raleigh wrote it the night before his execution, 1618. At the same time this leaves untouched the question whether he may not at some earlier day have been its author. There is a certain amount of evidence in favour of this tradition, which is carefully put together in Hannah’s _Poems by Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others_, 1845, pp. 89-98. P. 10, No. viii.--The author of these beautiful lines was a minister of the Scotch Kirk at the close of the sixteenth century. Several stanzas have been omitted.