From Rite and Ordinance abused they fled To Wilds where both were utterly unknown; But not to them had Providence foreshown What benefits are missed, what evils bred,...
Mine ear has rung, my spirit sunk subdued, Sharing the strong emotion of the crowd, When each pale brow to dread hosannas bowed While clouds of incense mounting veiled the rood,...
Open your gates, ye everlasting Piles! Types of the spiritual Church which God hath reared; Not loth we quit the newly-hallowed sward And humble altar, 'mid your sumptuous aisles...
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned Albeit labouring for a scanty band Of white robed Scholars only this immense And glorious Work of fine intelligence!...
The encircling ground, in native turf arrayed, Is now by solemn consecration given To social interests, and to favouring Heaven; And where the rugged colts their gambols played,...
They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build. Be mine, in hours of fear Or groveling thought, to seek a refuge here; Or through the aisles of Westminster to roam:...
Why sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled, Coil within coil, at noon-tide? For the WORD Yields, if with unpresumptuous faith explored, Power at whose touch the sluggard shall unfold...
Ungrateful Country, if thou e'er forget The sons who for thy civil rights have bled! How, like a Roman, Sidney bowed his head, And Russel's milder blood the scaffold wet;...
A genial hearth, a hospitable board, And a refined rusticity, belong To the neat mansion, where, his flock among, The learned Pastor dwells, their watchful Lord. Though meek and patient as a sheathed sword;...
From Little down to Least, in due degree, Around the Pastor, each in new-wrought vest, Each with a vernal posy at his breast, We stood, a trembling, earnest Company! With low soft murmur, like a distant bee,...
The Young-ones gathered in from hill and dale, With holiday delight on every brow: 'Tis passed away; far other thoughts prevail; For they are taking the baptismal Vow...
I saw a Mother's eye intensely bent Upon a Maiden trembling as she knelt; In and for whom the pious Mother felt Things that we judge of by a light too faint:...
Shun not this Rite, neglected, yea abhorred, By some of unreflecting mind, as calling Man to curse man, (thought monstrous and appalling.) Go thou and hear the threatenings of the Lord;...
Woman! the Power who left his throne on high, And deigned to wear the robe of flesh we wear, The Power that thro' the straits of Infancy Did pass dependent on maternal care,...
The Vested Priest before the Altar stands; Approach, come gladly, ye prepared, in sight Of God and chosen friends, your troth to plight With the symbolic ring, and willing hands...
Closing the sacred Book which long has fed Our meditations, give we to a day Of annual joy one tributary lay; This day, when, forth by rustic music led, The village Children, while the sky is red...
Be this the chosen site; the virgin sod, Moistened from age to age by dewy eve, Shall disappear, and grateful earth receive The corner-stone from hands that build to God....
Even while I speak, the sacred roofs of France Are shattered into dust; and self-exiled From altars threatened, leveled, or defiled, Wander the Ministers of God, as chance Opens a way for life, or consonance...
Thus all things lead to Charity secured By them who blessed the soft and happy gale That landward urged the great Deliverer's sail, Till in the sunny bay his fleet was moored!...