May Carols

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Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857 - English poetry - 126 pages

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Page 8 - Judaean stable's gloom : O sweet, O awful Sacrifice ! He smiles in sleep, yet knows the doom. Thou gav'st Him life ! But was not this That Life which knows no parting breath ? Unmeasured Life ? unwaning Bliss ? Dread Priestess, lo ! thou gav'st Him death ! Beneath the Tree thy Mother stood ; Beneath the Cross thou too shalt stand : — O Tree of Life ! O bleeding Rood ! Thy shadow stretches far its hand. That God who made the sun and moon In swaddling bands lies dumb and bound ! — Love's Captive...
Page 14 - mid the noontide glow "With merged yet separate radiance burn, With human taste and touch, even so, The things He knew He willed to learn. He sat beside the lowly door : His homeless eyes appeared to trace In evening skies remembered lore, And shadows of His Father's face. One only knew Him. She alone Who nightly to His cradle crept, And lying like the moonbeam prone, Worshipped her Maker as He slept.
Page 25 - From room to room those children roam, Heart-stricken by the unwonted black : Their house no longer seems their home : They search ; yet know not what they lack. Years pass : Self-Will and Passion strike Their roots more deeply day by day ; Old servants weep ; and " how unlike " Is all the tender neighbours say. And yet at moments, like a dream, A mother's image o'er them flits : Like her's their eyes a moment beam ; The voice grows soft ; the brow unknits.
Page 5 - To drown the fleet and fell the tower, Obeys thee as the bird that sings Her love-chant in a fleeting shower. Amid an ordered universe Man's spirit only dares rebel : — With light, O God, its darkness pierce ! With love its raging chaos quell ! m.
Page 16 - Until the awful hour was nigh. Then, then, there crept her spirit o'er The shadow of that pain world-wide Whereof her Son the substance bore : — Him offering, half in Him she died ; Standing like that strange Moon, whereon The mask of Earth lies dim and dead, An orb of glory, shadow-strewn, Yet girdled with a luminous thread.
Page 51 - The annual spring flowers reappear. Amid the coarser needs of earth All shapes of brightness, what are they But wanderers, exiled from their birth, Or pledges of a happier day? Yea, what is Beauty, judged aright, But some surpassing, transient gleam; Some smile from heaven, in waves of light, Rippling o'er life's distempered dream? Or broken memories of that bliss Which rushed through first-born Nature's blood When He who ever was, and is, Looked down and saw that all was good?
Page 111 - Lifts high in firm, untrembling hold Her chalice of fulfilled delights. Confirmed around her queenly lip The smile late wavering, on she moves ; And seems through deepening tides to step Of steadier joys and larger loves.
Page 6 - ALL but unutterable Name ! Adorable, yet awful, sound ! Thee can the sinful nations frame Save with their foreheads to the ground ? Soul-searching and all-cleansing Fire ! To see Thy countenance were to die : Yet how beyond the bound retire Of Thy serene immensity ? Thou mov'st beside us, if the spot We change — a noteless, wandering tribe ; The orbits of our life and thought In Thee their little arcs describe. In...
Page 4 - As ordered flower succeeds to flower, And May the ladder of her sweets Ascends, advancing hour by hour From scale to scale, what heart but beats? Some Presence veiled, in fields and groves, That mingles rapture with remorse; Some buried joy beside us moves, And thrills the soul with such discourse As they, perchance, that wondering pair Who to Emmaus bent their way, Hearing, heard not. Like them our prayer We make — "The night is near us — Stay!
Page 69 - A sweet exhaustion seems to hold In spells of calm the shrouded eve: The gorse itself a beamless gold Puts forth: yet nothing seems to grieve. The dewy chaplets hang on air; The willowy fields are silver-grey; Sad odours wander here and there; And yet we feel that it is May. Relaxed and with a broken flow From dripping bowers low carols swell In mellower, glassier tones, as though They mounted through a bubbling well. The crimson orchis scarce sustains Upon its drenched and drooping spire The burden...

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