O child of delusion! to stand The chosen of Jesus among, To cover the fraud of thy hand, By falsehood to him on thy tongue! How vain, the deceit of the heart To shroud in a mantle so frail! Its perfidy, thus by its art. To think from Omniscience to veil! Lost woman! but three hours before, The form of thy partner in sin Was borne, wan and cold, from the door, Where thou didst so rashly come in. And they, who had carried him out, The clods o'er his bosom to lay, Were waiting, the threshold about, To bear thee to darkness away. Sapphira, could Mercy restore, Or Pity thy spirit recall, To light up its dwelling once more, It should not thus hopelessly fall. But Mercy besought thee in vain, From death's awful brink to recede; To shun the despair and the pain Where she is forbidden to plead. And Pity's warm tear-drops must roll The more, that she cannot relume The clay whence the self-wounded soul Hath rushed to a suicide's doom. How potent, how maddening the love, O gold, of a mortal must be, To challenge an arm from above-- To stake earth and heaven for thee! For Justice to Judgment will call; And who shall their coming abide, When wrath the most fearful of all, "The wrath of the Lamb," is defied? [3] This piece originally illustrated an engraving. WILLIAM AT SEA. Whilst thou art away, where the proud waves are swelling Beneath thy light bark, ever mindful of thee, The days of thine absence, at home we are telling, And counting the hours of our William at sea. And thou, whether cradled to sleep by the billow, Or watching the sport of the spray and the foam, If pensive on deck, or in dreams on thy pillow, We know hast thy soul rapt with visions of home. We know, when the sun mounts the east in his glory, Or smiles a "good night," as the west he descends, Thy heart, pointing back, to itself tells the story Of mansion paternal, and kindred and friends. And when at the morning and evening devotion, While bending with offerings of praise and of prayer, To God we commend thee afar on the ocean, We feel thou art kneeling for us to him there. While months on the waters, long months are before thee, The two fluid worlds thou art tossing between-- The cold deep below, and the skies bending o'er thee, Alone by their changes will vary the scene. Or, if a bright isle, on the flood-waste upstarting, Rude ocean's green oasis, rest thy glad eye, 'T will fade as a cloud--as a phantom departing, 'T will sink in the circle that bounds sea and sky.