I LOVE THE EARTH."

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I love the sea she is my fellow-creature,

My careful purveyor; she provides me store :
She walls me round; she makes my diet greater;

She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore :

But, Lord of oceans, when compared with Thee,

What is the ocean, or her wealth to me?

To heaven's high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky:
But what is heaven, great God, compared to Thee?
Without Thy presence heaven's no heaven to me.

Without Thy presence earth gives no refection;
Without Thy presence sea affords no treasure ;
Without Thy presence air's a rank infection;
Without Thy presence heaven itself no pleasure :
If not possess'd, if not enjoy'd in Thee,
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?

The highest honours that the world can boast,
Are subjects far too low for my desire;
The brightest beams of glory are (at most)
But dying sparkles of Thy living fire:

The loudest flames that earth can kindle, be
But nightly glow-worms, if compared to Thee.

Without Thy presence wealth is bags of cares ;
Wisdom but folly; joy disquiet-sadness:
Friendship is treason, and delights are snares;
Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing madness;
Without Thee, Lord, things be not what they be,
Nor have they being, when compared with Thee.

In having all things, and not Thee, what have I?
Not having Thee, what have my labours got?
Let me enjoy but Thee, what further crave I?
And having Thee alone, what have I not?

I wish nor sea nor land; nor would I be
Possess'd of heaven, heaven unpossess'd by Thee.

[WILLIAM BROWNE was born at Tavistock, in Devonshire, in 1590, was educated at Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple, but did not follow the law as a profession. He lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke, and realized the means of purchasing an estate. He died in 1645.

His best poems were written before he was twenty years of age; and as he published none of them after he was thirty, they contain marks of puerility and imitations of other authors, and are without much vigour.]

SWEET Country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!

But, serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee.

Thou never ploughed the ocean's foam,
To seek and bring rough pepper home;
Nor to the eastern Ind dost rove,

To bring from thence the scorched clove;

A COUNTRY LIFE.

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Nor, with the loss of thy lov'd rest,

Bring'st home the ingot from the west.
No; thy ambition's master-piece

Flies no thought higher than a fleece;
Or how to pay thy hands, and clear
All scores, and so to end the year;
But walk'st about thy own dear grounds,

Not craving others' larger bounds;

For well thou know'st 'tis not th' extent

Of land makes life, but sweet content.

When now the cock, the ploughman's horn,
Calls for the lily-wristed morn,

Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go,

Which, though well soil'd, yet thou dost know

That the best compost for the lands

Is the wise master's feet and hands.

There, at the plough, thou find'st thy team,

With a hind whistling there to them;
And cheer'st them up by singing how
The kingdom's portion is the plough.
This done, then to th' enamelled meads
Thou go'st; and, as thy foot there treads,
Thou seest a present god-like power
Imprinted in each herb and flower;
And smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine,

Sweet as the blossoms of the vine.

Here thou behold'st thy large, sleek neat,

Unto the dewlaps up in meat;

And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer,