_Glory_ with all her lamps shall burn, And watch the warrior’s sleeping clay, Till the last trumpet rouse his urn, To aid the triumphs of the day. But he had a simpler manner, and even in his stronger expressions rose to the majesty of simple strength, as in the following: LAUNCHING INTO ETERNITY. It was a brave attempt! advent’rous he, Who in the first ship broke the unknown sea: And leaving his dear native shores behind, Trusted his life to the licentious wind. I see the surging brine: the tempest raves: He on the pine-plank rides across the waves, Exulting on the edge of thousand gaping graves: He steers the winged boat, and shifts the sails, Conquers the flood, and manages the gales. Such is the soul that leaves this mortal land, Fearless when the great Master gives command. Death is the storm: she smiles to hear it roar, And bids the tempest waft her from the shore: Then with a skilful helm she sweeps the seas, And manages the raging storm with ease: (Her faith can govern death) she spreads her wings Wide to the wind, and as she sails she sings, And loses by degrees the sight of mortal things. As the shores lessen, so her joys arise, The waves roll gentler, and the tempest dies, Now vast eternity fills all her sight, She floats on the broad deep with infinite delight, The seas for ever calm, the skies for ever bright. The weight and grandeur of his thoughts, the radiance of his perception, the far-reaching, remote grandeur of the objects of his verse, must always be taken into account, pondered, and allowed an adequate influence over the reader’s mind, whenever attempts are made to estimate what he was as a sacred poet. Not the less was his mind in ready accord with objects of Nature. He had seen, probably, little of Nature in her more grand and exciting moods. Men like him, horn to London life, and only occasionally escaping thence to some near and quiet watering-place, saw little of those ample pages which, in our own or other lands, are now unrolled to almost every designing eye. But his verses abundantly show with what perfect sympathy every object touched him, how all the smaller or greater things of Nature impressed the subtle sense within him, and awoke the mystery and the awe. The following lines, not composed as a hymn, but included in his “Miscellaneous Thoughts,” have always seemed to us very cogently to illustrate this: