A fouler vision yet; an age of light, Light without love, glares on the aching sight: Oh, who can tell how calm and sweet, Meek Walton, shows thy green retreat, When wearied with the tale thy times disclose, The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose? Thus bad and good their several warnings give Of His approach, whom none may see and live: Faith’s ear, with awful still delight, Counts them like minute-bells at night. Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn, While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne. But what are Heaven’s alarms to hearts that cower In wilful slumber, deepening every hour, That draw their curtains closer round, The nearer swells the trumpet’s sound? Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die, Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh. Second Sunday in Advent. And when these things begin to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth night. _St. Luke_ xxi. 28. NOT till the freezing blast is still, Till freely leaps the sparkling rill, And gales sweep soft from summer skies, As o’er a sleeping infant’s eyes A mother’s kiss; ere calls like these, No sunny gleam awakes the trees, Nor dare the tender flowerets show Their bosoms to th’ uncertain glow. Why then, in sad and wintry time, Her heavens all dark with doubt and crime, Why lifts the Church her drooping head, As though her evil hour were fled? Is she less wise than leaves of spring, Or birds that cower with folded wing? What sees she in this lowering sky To tempt her meditative eye? She has a charm, a word of fire, A pledge of love that cannot tire; By tempests, earthquakes, and by wars, By rushing waves and falling stars, By every sign her Lord foretold, She sees the world is waxing old, And through that last and direst storm Descries by faith her Saviour’s form. Not surer does each tender gem, Set in the fig-tree’s polish’d stem, Foreshow the summer season bland, Than these dread signs Thy mighty hand: But, oh, frail hearts, and spirits dark! The season’s flight unwarn’d we mark, But miss the Judge behind the door, For all the light of sacred lore: Yet is He there; beneath our eaves Each sound His wakeful ear receives: Hush, idle words, and thoughts of ill, Your Lord is listening: peace, be still. Christ watches by a Christian’s hearth, Be silent, “vain deluding mirth,” Till in thine alter’d voice be known Somewhat of Resignation’s tone. But chiefly ye should lift your gaze Above the world’s uncertain haze, And look with calm unwavering eye On the bright fields beyond the sky, Ye, who your Lord’s commission bear His way of mercy to prepare: Angels He calls ye: be your strife To lead on earth an Angel’s life.