And next to these, Thy gracious word Was as a pledge of benediction stored For Christian mothers, while they moan Their treasured hopes, just born, baptised, and gone. Oh, joy for Rachel’s broken heart! She and her babes shall meet no more to part; So dear to Christ her pious haste To trust them in His arms for ever safe embraced. She dares not grudge to leave them there, Where to behold them was her heart’s first prayer; She dares not grieve—but she must weep, As her pale placid martyr sinks to sleep, Teaching so well and silently How at the shepherd’s call the lamb should die: How happier far than life the end Of souls that infant-like beneath their burthen bend. First Sunday after Christmas. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down. _Isaiah_ xxxviii. 8; compare _Josh._ x. 13. ’TIS true, of old the unchanging sun His daily course refused to run, The pale moon hurrying to the west Paused at a mortal’s call, to aid The avenging storm of war, that laid Seven guilty realms at once on earth’s defiled breast. But can it be, one suppliant tear Should stay the ever-moving sphere? A sick man’s lowly-breathèd sigh, When from the world he turns away, And hides his weary eyes to pray, Should change your mystic dance, ye wanderers of the sky? We too, O Lord, would fain command, As then, Thy wonder-working hand, And backward force the waves of Time, That now so swift and silent bear Our restless bark from year to year; Help us to pause and mourn to Thee our tale of crime. Bright hopes, that erst the bosom warmed, And vows, too pure to be performed, And prayers blown wide by gales of care;— These, and such faint half-waking dreams, Like stormy lights on mountain streams, Wavering and broken all, athwart the conscience glare. How shall we ’scape the o’erwhelming Past? Can spirits broken, joys o’ercast, And eyes that never more may smile:— Can these th’ avenging bolt delay, Or win us back one little day The bitterness of death to soften and beguile? Father and Lover of our souls! Though darkly round Thine anger rolls, Thy sunshine smiles beneath the gloom, Thou seek’st to warn us, not confound, Thy showers would pierce the hardened ground And win it to give out its brightness and perfume. Thou smil’st on us in wrath, and we, E’en in remorse, would smile on Thee, The tears that bathe our offered hearts, We would not have them stained and dim, But dropped from wings of seraphim, All glowing with the light accepted love imparts.