But perhaps his poem “Few Happy Matches,” reveals some reason why his timid spirit refused to seek its happiness in matrimonial chains, and so he turned to the higher affections, singing— Life is a pain without Thy love; Who can ever bear to be Cursed with immortality, Among the stars, but far from Thee? But the author of many of these hymns must often have been wafted away with a true mystic ecstasy. The warmth of this rapture has been objected to; the objection lies, also, against the works of most of the great mystics. My God, the spring of all my joys, is one of countless illustrations— My God, my life, my love, To Thee, to Thee, I call. or— Dearest of all the names above. In such as these, if the reader feels unable to rise to them amidst the delights of family joys—wife, and children, and society—let him remember how Watts lived, his solitary nights, in a family where, no doubt, his presence was a charm and blessing, but in which he must have been to himself, comparatively, lonely as a monk, feeding his mind with thoughts until they became passions and ecstasies to him, and even found their vent in such words as the following: His charm shall make my numbers flow, And hold the falling floods; While silence sits on every bough, And bends the listening woods. I’ll carve our passion on the bark; And every wounded tree Shall drop and hear some mystic mark That Jesus died for me. The swains shall wonder when they read, Inscribed on all the grove, That Heaven itself came down and bled To win a mortal’s love. To this same order of sacred personification also belong those verses, which are certainly remarkable, and when properly apprehended among the most tenderly antithetical in our language, on the Death of Moses: Sweet was the journey to the sky The wondrous prophet tried; “Climb up the mount,” said God, “and die;” The prophet climbed and died. Softly his fainting head he lay Upon his Maker’s breast; His Maker kissed his soul away, And laid his flesh to rest. In God’s own arms he left the breath That God’s own Spirit gave; His was the noblest road to death, And his the sweetest grave.