FRAILTY.

LORD, in my silence how do I depise
What upon trust

Is styled honor, riches, or fair eyes,

But is fair dust!

I surname them gilded clay,

Dear earth, fine grass, or hay;

In all, I think my foot doth ever tread
Upon their head.

But when I view abroad both regiments,

The world's, and Thine;

Thine clad with simpleness and sad events
The other fine,

Full of glory and gay weeds,

Brave language, braver deeds: That which was dust before doth quickly rise, And prick mine eyes.

O brook not this, lest if what even now

My foot did tread,

Affront those joys, wherewith Thou didst endow And long since wed

My poor soul, e'en sick of love;

It may a Babel prove,

Commodious to conquer heaven and Thee

Planted in me.

CONSTANCY.

WHO is the honest man?

He that doth still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbour, and himself most true;
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due.

Whose honesty is not

So loose or easy, that a ruffling wind
Can blow away, or glittering look it blind;
Who rides his sure and even trot,
While the world now rides by, now lags behind ;
Who, when great trials come,

Nor seeks nor shuns them; but doth calmly stay
Till he the thing and the example weigh:

All being brought into a sum,

What place or person calls for, he doth pay.

Whom none can work or woo

To use in anything a trick or sleight;
For above all things he abhors deceit :

His words, and works, and fashion too,
Al of a piece, and all are clear and straight.
Who never melts or thaws

At close tentations:* when the day is done,
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run:
The sun to others writeth laws,
And is their virtue; Virtue is his sun.

*Temptations or trials.

Who, when he is to treat

With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway, Allows for that, and keeps his constant way:

Whom others' faults do not defeat ;

But though men fail him, yet his part doth play.
Whom nothing can procure,

When the wide world runs bias, from his will
To wreathe his limbs, and share, not mend, the ill.
This is the marksman, safe and sure,

Who still is right, and prays to be so still.

AFFLICTION.

My heart did heave, and there came forth, “O

God!"

By that I knew that Thou wast in the grief,

To guide and govern it to my relief,

Making a sceptre of the rod :

Hadst Thou not had Thy part,

Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.

But since Thy breath gave me both life and shape,
Thou know'st my tallies ;* and when there's assigned
So much breath to a sigh, what's then behind?
Or if some years with it escape,

The sigh then only is

A gale to bring me sooner to my bliss.†

* Reckonings, which were anciently kept by two notched sticks corresponding to each other, each person being a party to the account having one.

†There is a popular old superstition that every time we sigh, we lose a drop of blood from the heart, and thus impair our strength. See "Hamlet," Act IV., Scene 7:

"A spendthrift sigh

That hurts by easing."

Thy life on earth was grief, and Thou art still
Constant unto it, making it to be

A point of honour, now to grieve in me,
And in Thy members suffer ill.

They who lament one cross,

Thou dying daily, praise Thee to Thy loss.

THE STAR.

BRIGHT spark, shot from a brighter place, Where beams surround my Saviour's face, Canst thou be anywhere

So well as there?

Yet, if thou wilt from thence depart,
Take a bad lodging in my heart;
For thou canst make a debtor,
And make it better.

For with thy firework burn to dust
Folly, and worse than folly, lust;
Then with thy light refine,
And make it shine.

So disengaged from sin and sickness,
Touch it with thy celestial quickness,
That it may hang and move
After thy love.

Then, with our trinity of light,

Motion, and heat, let's take our flight

Unto the place where thou

Before didst bow.

Get me a standing there, and place

Among the beams, which crown the face
Of Him, who died to part

Sin and my heart:

That so among the rest I may

Glitter, and curl, and wind as they :

That winding is their fashion

Of adoration.

Sure thou wilt joy by gaining me
To fly home like a laden bee
Unto that hive of beams

And garland streams.

SUNDAY. ·

ODAY most calm, most bright!
The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
Th' endorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a Friend, and with His blood;
The couch of Time; Care's balm and bay;
The week were dark, but for thy light:

Thy torch doth show the way.

The other days and thou

Make up one man; whose face thou art,
Knocking at heaven with thy brow :
The worky-days are the back part;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow,
Till thy release appear.