O cheerful tender strain! the heart That duly bears with you its part, Singing so thankful to the dreary blast, Though gone and spent its joyous prime, And on the world’s autumnal time, ’Mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast: That is the heart for thoughtful seer, Watching, in trance nor dark nor clear, Th’ appalling Future as it nearer draws: His spirit calmed the storm to meet, Feeling the rock beneath his feet, And tracing through the cloud th’ eternal Cause. That is the heart for watchman true Waiting to see what GOD will do, As o’er the Church the gathering twilight falls No more he strains his wistful eye, If chance the golden hours be nigh, By youthful Hope seen beaming round her walls. Forced from his shadowy paradise, His thoughts to Heaven the steadier rise: There seek his answer when the world reproves: Contented in his darkling round, If only he be faithful found, When from the east the eternal morning moves. _Note_: The expression, “calm delay,” is borrowed from a friend, by whose kind permission the following stanzas are here inserted. TO THE RED-BREAST. Unheard in summer’s flaring ray, Pour forth thy notes, sweet singer, Wooing the stillness of the autumn day: Bid it a moment linger, Nor fly Too soon from winter’s scowling eye. The blackbird’s song at even-tide, And hers, who gay ascends, Filling the heavens far and wide, Are sweet. But none so blends, As thine, With calm decay, and peace divine. Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity. Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? _Matthew_ xviii. 21. WHAT liberty so glad and gay, As where the mountain boy, Reckless of regions far away, A prisoner lives in joy? The dreary sounds of crowded earth, The cries of camp or town, Never untuned his lonely mirth, Nor drew his visions down. The snow-clad peaks of rosy light That meet his morning view, The thwarting cliffs that bound his sight, They bound his fancy too. Two ways alone his roving eye For aye may onward go, Or in the azure deep on high, Or darksome mere below. O blest restraint! more blessèd range! Too soon the happy child His nook of homely thought will change For life’s seducing wild: Too soon his altered day-dreams show This earth a boundless space, With sun-bright pleasures to and fro Sporting in joyous race: While of his narrowing heart each year, Heaven less and less will fill, Less keenly, thorough his grosser ear, The tones of mercy thrill. It must be so: else wherefore falls The Saviour’s voice unheard, While from His pard’ning Cross He calls, “O spare as I have spared?”