112

HEAVENLY MUSIC.

And the cherubic host, in thousand quires,

Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,

With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,

Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly :

That we, on earth, with undiscording voice,
May rightly answer that melodious noise;

As once we did, till disproportioned sin

Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din

Broke the fair music that all creatures made

To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed

In perfect diapason, whilst they stood

In first obedience, and their state of good.

Oh, may we soon again renew that song,

And keep in tune with heaven, till God, ere long

To his celestial concert us unite,

To live with him, and sing in endless morn of night!

MILTON.

HEAVENLY MUSIC.

UCH music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook :
Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took:

The air, such pleasure loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close!

MILTON.

HE hath risen up from her morning prayer,
And chained the waves of her golden hair;

Hath kissed her sleeping sister's cheek,

And breathed the blessing she might not speak,

Lest the whisper should break the dream that smiled

Round the snow-white brow of the sinless child.

114

A MORNING PICTURE.

Her radiant lamb and her purpling dove
Have ta'en their food from the hand they love;
The low, deep coo, and the plaintive bleat

In the morning calm, how clear and sweet;

Ere the sun has warmed the dawning hours
She hath watered the glow of her garden flowers,
And welcomed the hum of the earliest bee
In the moist bloom working drowsily;

Then up the flow of the rocky rill

She trips away to the pastoral hill;
And as she lifts her glistening eyes,
In the joy of her heart, to the dewy skies,
She feels that her sainted parents bless
The life of their orphan shepherdess.

'Tis a lonely glen! but the happy child

Hath friends whom she meets in the morning wild,

As on she trips, her native stream,

Like her, hath awoke from a joyful dream,

And glides away by her twinkling feet,

With a face as bright and a voice as sweet.
In the ozier bank, the ouzel sitting
Hath heard her steps, and away is flitting
From stone to stone, as she glides along,
Then sinks in the stream with a broken song.

The lapwing, fearless of his nest,

Stands looking round with his delicate crest;

For a love-like joy is in his cry

As he wheels, and darts, and glances by.

Is the heron asleep on the silvery sand

Of his little lake? Lo! his wings expand