?

I laugh not at another's losse,

I grudge not at another's gaine ;
No worldly wave my mind can tosse,
I brooke that is another's bane:
I fear no foe, nor fawne on friend,
I lothe not life, nor dread mine end.

I joy not in no earthly blisse;

I weigh not Cresus' welth a straw ;
For ease, I care not what it is;

I feare not fortune's fatall law:
My mind is such as may not move
For beautie bright or force of love.

I wish but what I have at will;

I wander not to seek for more;
I like the plaine, I clime no hill;

In greatest storms I sitte on shore,
And laugh at them that toile in vaine
To get what must be lost againe.

I kisse not where I wish to kill;

I feigne not love where most I hate ;
I breake no sleep to winne my will;
I wayte not at the mighties gate;
I scorne no poore, I feare no rich;
I feel no want, nor have too much.

The court, ne cast, I like, ne loath;
Extreames are counted worst of all;
The golden meane betwixt them both
Doth surest sit, and fears no fall;
This is my choyce; for why? I finde
No welth is like a quiet minde.

My welth is health, and perfect ease;
My conscience clere my chief defence:
I never seeke by brybes to please,

Nor by desert to give offence:
Thus do I live, thus will I die;
Would all did so as well as I !

Quoted by BEN JONSON in
Every Man out of his Humour, 1509.

December 17.

THE GOLDEN PRISON.

WEEP not for me, when I am gone,
Nor spend thy faithful breath
In grieving o'er the spot or hour
Of all-enshrouding death:

Nor waste in idle praise thy love
On deeds of head or hand,
Which live within the living Book,
Or else are writ in sand;

But let it be thy best of prayers,
That I may find the grace
To reach the holy house of toil,
The frontier penance-place,—

To reach that golden palace bright,
Where souls elect abide,

Waiting their certain call to Heaven,
With angels at their side;

Where hate nor pride nor fear torments
The transitory guest,

But in the willing agony

He plunges, and is blest.

1600

And as the fainting patriarch gain'd
His needful halt mid-way,

And then refresh'd pursued his path,
Where up the mount it lay,

So pray, that, rescued from the storm
Of Heaven's eternal ire,

I may lie down, then rise again,
Safe, and yet saved by fire.

December 18.

J. H. NEWMAN.

ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand ;
But came the waves and washed it away;
Agayne, I wrote it with a second hand;
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
Vayne man, said she, that dost in vain assaye
A mortall thing so to immortalize;
For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
And eek my name bee wyped out lykwize.
Not so, quod I; let baser things devize
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame!
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the hevens wryte your glorious name,
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

SPENSER, Sonnet LXXV.

December 19.

HOPE BENEATH THE WATERS.

"I CANNOT mount to Heaven beneath this ban; Can Christian hope survive so far below The level of the happiness of man?

Can angels' wings in these dark waters grow?"

A spirit voice replied, “From bearing right
Our sorest burthens, comes fresh strength to bear!
And so we rise again towards the light,
And quit the sunless depths for upper air:
Meek patience is as diver's breath to all
Who sink in sorrow's sea, and many a ray

Comes gleaming downward from the source of day,
To guide us reascending from our fall;

The rocks have bruised thee sore, but angel's wings Grow fast from bruises, hope from anguish springs." C. TENNYSON TURNER.

December 20.

EARTH, earth, earth, behold!

And in that judgment look upon thine own!

Even thus amid thy pride and luxury, Oh Earth! shall that last coming burst on thee, That secret coming of the Son of Man, When all the cherub-throning clouds shall shine, Irradiate with his bright advancing sign:

When that Great Husbandman shall wave His fan, Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away; Still to the noontide of that nightless day,

Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain. Along the busy mart and crowded street, The buyer and the seller still shall meet,

And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain ; Still pouring out the Cup of Woe;

Till Earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro,

And mountains molten by His burning feet, And Heaven His presence own, all red with furnace heat.

The hundred-gated cities then,
The towers and temples, nam'd of men
Eternal, and the thrones of kings;
The gilded summer palaces,

The courtly bowers of love and ease,
Where still the bird of pleasure sings ;
Ask ye the destiny of them?

Go gaze on fallen Jerusalem!

Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll, 'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurl'd, The skies are shrivell'd like a burning scroll,

And the vast common doom ensepulchres the world.

Lord of all power, when Thou art there alone
On Thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne,
That in its high meridian noon

Needs not the perish'd sun nor moon;

When Thou art there in Thy presiding state, Wide sceptred monarch o'er the realm of doom: When from the sea depths, from earth's darkest womb, The dead of all the ages round Thee wait; And when the tribes of wickedness are strewn

Like forest leaves in the autumn of Thine ire;
Faithful and true! Thou still wilt save Thine own!
The saints shall dwell within th' unharming fire,
Each white robe spotless, blooming every palm,
Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side,
So shall the Church, Thy bright and mystic bride,
Sit on the stormy gulf, a halcyon bird of calm.
Yes, mid yon angry and destroying signs,
O'er us the rainbow of Thy mercy shines,
We hail, we bless the covenant of its beam,
Almighty to avenge, Almightiest to redeem.

H. H. MILMAN, Dean of St. Paul's,
The Fall of Jerusalem.