happy

Family blessings.

O happy man, whose soul is filled
With zeal and reverent awe!
His lips to God their honors yield,
His life adorns the law.

A careful providence shall stand
And ever guard thy head,
Shall on the labors of thy hand
Its kindly blessings shed.

[Thy wife shall be a fruitful vine;
Thy children round thy board,
Each like a plant of honor shine,
And learn to fear the Lord.]

The Lord shall thy best hopes fulfil
For months and years to come;

The blessing of God on the business and comforts of life.

If God succeed not, all the cost
And pains to build the house are lost;
If God the city will not keep,
The watchful guards as well may sleep.

What if you rise before the sun,
And work and toil when day is done;
Careful and sparing eat your bread,
To shun that poverty you dread;

'Tis all in vain, till God hath blessed;
He can make rich, yet give us rest:
Children and friends are blessings too,
If God our Sovereign make them so.

The saint's trial and safety.

Unshaken as the sacred hill,
And firm as mountains be,
Firm as a rock the soul shall rest
That leans, O Lord, on thee.

Not walls nor hills could guard so well
Old Salem's happy ground,
As those eternal arms of love
That every saint surround.

While tyrants are a smarting scourge
To drive them near to God,
Divine compassion does allay
The fury of the rod.

Deal gently, Lord, with souls sincere,
And lead them safely on

v.12ff
C. M.
Vows made in trouble paid in the church.

What shall I render to my God
For all his kindness shown?
My feet shall visit thine abode,
My songs address thy throne.

Among the saints that fill thine house
My off'rings shall be paid;
There shall my zeal perform the vows
My soul in anguish made.

How much is mercy thy delight,
Thou ever-blessed God!
How dear thy servants in thy sight!
How precious is their blood!

How happy all thy servants are!

How lovely are thy dwellings fair!
O Lord of Hoasts, how dear
The pleasant Tabernacles are!
Where thou do'st dwell so near.
My Soul doth long and almost die
Thy Courts O Lord to see,
My heart and flesh aloud do crie,
O living God, for thee.
There ev'n the Sparrow freed from wrong
Hath found a house of rest,
The Swallow there, to lay her young
Hath built her brooding nest,
Ev'n by thy Altars Lord of Hoasts
They find their safe abode,

Done Aug. 8. 1653. Terzetti.


Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the Nations
Muse a vain thing, the Kings of th'earth upstand
With power, and Princes in their Congregations
Lay deep their plots together through each Land,
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear.
Let us break off; say they, by strength of hand
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell
Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe

Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;
When I (whom sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In prince's court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain),
Walk'd forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames;
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,

As kings, seeing their lives about to pass,
Take off the heavy ermine and the crown,
So had the trees that autumn-time laid down
Their golden garments on the dying grass,
When I, who watched the seasons in the glass
Of my own thoughts, saw all the autumn's brown
Leap into life and wear a sunny gown
Of leafage fresh as happy April has.
Great spring came singing upward from the south;
For in my heart, far carried on the wind,
Your words like winged seeds took root and grew,

Horace: Book III, Ode 3

"Carminis interea nostri redæmus in orbem---"


Let us return, then, for a time,
To our accustomed round of rhyme;
And let my songs' familiar art
Not fail to move my lady's heart.

They say that Orpheus with his lute
Had power to tame the wildest brute;
That "Vatiations on a Theme"
Of his would stay the swiftest stream.

They say that by the minstrel's song
Cithæron's rocks were moved along
To Thebes, where, as you may recall,

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

A hidden light illumines all our seeing,
An unknown love enchants our solitude.
We feel and know that from the depths of being
Exhales an infinite, a perfect good.

Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow
And be not happy like a naked star,
Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow,