By our own niggard rule we try The hope to suppliants given! We mete out love, as if our eye Saw to the end of Heaven. Yes, ransomed sinner! wouldst thou know How often to forgive, How dearly to embrace thy foe, Look where thou hop’st to live;— When thou hast told those isles of light, And fancied all beyond, Whatever owns, in depth or height, Creation’s wondrous bond; Then in their solemn pageant learn Sweet mercy’s praise to see: Their Lord resigned them all, to earn The bliss of pardoning thee. Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity. Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things onto Himself. _Philippians_ iii. 21. RED o’er the forest peers the setting sun, The line of yellow light dies fast away That crowned the eastern copse: and chill and dun Falls on the moor the brief November day. Now the tired hunter winds a parting note, And Echo hide good-night from every glade; Yet wait awhile, and see the calm heaves float Each to his rest beneath their parent shade. How like decaying life they seem to glide! And yet no second spring have they in store, But where they fall, forgotten to abide Is all their portion, and they ask no more. Soon o’er their heads blithe April airs shall sing, A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold, The green buds glisten in the dews of Spring, And all be vernal rapture as of old. Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie, In all the world of busy life around No thought of them; in all the bounteous sky, No drop, for them, of kindly influence found. Man’s portion is to die and rise again— Yet he complains, while these unmurmuring part With their sweet lives, as pure from sin and stain, As his when Eden held his virgin heart. And haply half unblamed his murmuring voice Might sound in Heaven, were all his second life Only the first renewed—the heathen’s choice, A round of listless joy and weary strife. For dreary were this earth, if earth were all, Tho’ brightened oft by dear Affection’s kiss;— Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall? But catch a gleam beyond it, and ’tis bliss. Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart, Whether slow creeping on cold earth, or borne On lofty steed, or loftier prow, we dart O’er wave or field: yet breezes laugh to scorn Our puny speed, and birds, and clouds in heaven, And fish, living shafts that pierce the main, And stars that shoot through freezing air at even— Who but would follow, might he break his chain?