Learn of me, thus cries the Saviour, Come, ye servants, see your station, Come, ye poor, some comfort gather Think, that if your humbler stations, See your Saviour is ascended! See He looks with pity down! Trust Him, all will soon be mended, Bear His cross, you'll share His crown. MORNING SOLILOQUY. The following lines were written by Hannah More for her own use, in early life, but a copy having been given to a friend, the author was importuned to print it. She complied, and prefixed to the piece the following "As early rising is very conducive to health, and to the improvement of the mind in knowledge and piety, this Soliloquy is designed to promote so important an end; and is recommended more particularly to young persons, as, by contracting a habit of rising early in the days of their youth, they would be less liable to depart from such a custom as they advance in life. The last stanza is expressive of the action of rising, in order that those who repeat it may have no excuse for not quitting their beds immediately. SOFT slumbers now mine eyes forsake May my freed spirit too awake, With heavenly strength endued! Thou silent murderer SLOTH, no more Nor let me waste another hour With thee, thou felon SLEEP. Hark, O my soul, could dying men One lavish'd hour retrieve, Though spent in tears, and pass'd in pain, But seas of pearl, and mines of gold, Were offer'd them in vain ; Their pearl of countless price is lost,* And where's the promis'd gain? Lord, when thy day of dread account Teach me in health each good to prize, I then shall worthless deem. For all thy wondrous mercies past See Matthew xiii. 46. A HYMN OF PRAISE, FOR THE ABUNDANT HARVEST OF 1796. AFTER A YEAR OF SCARCITY. GREAT God! when famine threaten'd late To scourge our guilty land, O did we learn from that dark fate Did then our sins to memory rise? Did we forsake one evil path? 'Tis true, we fail'd not to repine, Though the bright chain of peace be broke, And war, with ruthless sword, Unpeoples nations at a stroke, Yet who regards the Lord? But God, who in his strict decrees, He mark'd our angry spirits rise, He, when he brings his children low, And when he strikes the heaviest blow, Now frost, and flood, and blight* no more, Rewards the reaper's toil! As when the promis'd harvest fail'd, The envious patriarchs were assail'd The angry brothers then forgot Each fierce and jarring feud; United by their adverse lot, They lov'd as brothers should. So here, from Heaven's correcting hand, Like the rich fool, let us not say, But shake the overplus away, These three visitations followed each other in quick succession. |