SACRED SONGS.

SACRED SONGS.

THOU ART, O GOD.

(AIR-Unknown.)

"The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light Thou hast, set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter."-Psalm lxxiv. 16, 17.

and the sun.

THOU art, O God, the life and light
Of all this wond'rous world we see;
Its glow by day, its smile by night,

Are but reflections caught from Thee.
Where'er we turn Thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are Thine!

When day, with farewell beam, delays
Among the op'ning clouds of even,
And we can almost think we gaze

Through golden vistas into heaven-
Those hues that make the sun's decline
So soft, so radiant, Lord! are Thine.

When night, with wings of starry gloom,
O'ershadows all the earth and skies,
Like some dark, beauteous bird, whose plume
Is sparkling with unnumber'd eyes-
That sacred gloom, those fires divine,
So grand, so countless, Lord! are Thine.

When youthful spring around us breathes,
Thy Spirit warms her fragrant sigh;
And every flower the summer wreathes
Is born beneath that kindling eye.
Where'er we turn, Thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are Thine!

THE BIRD LET LOOSE.

(Air-BEETHOVEN.)

THE bird let loose in eastern skies,*
When hast'ning fondly home,

Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
Where idle warblers roam.

But high she shoots through air and light,
Above all low delay,

Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,
Nor shadow dims her way.

So grant me, God, from every care
And stain of passion free,
Aloft, through Virtue's purer air,
To hold my course to Thee!
No sin to cloud, no lure to stay
My soul, as home she springs ;-
Thy sunshine on her joyful way,
Thy freedom in her wings!

FALLEN IS THY THRONE.
(Air-MARTINI.)

FALLEN is thy throne, O Israel !
Silence is o'er thy plains;
Thy dwellings all lie desolate,
Thy children weep in chains!
Where are the dews that fed thee
On Etham's barren shore?

That fire from heaven which led thee,
Now lights thy path no more.

Lord! thou didst love Jerusalem-
Once she was all Thy own;
Her love Thy fairest heritage +

Her power Thy glory's throne,+
Till evil came and blighted

Thy long-loved olive-tree; §

*The carrier-pigeon, it is well-known, flies at an elevated pitch, in order to surmount every obstacle between her and the place to which she is destined.

"I have left mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies."-Jer. xii. 7.

"Do not disgrace the throne of thy glory."-Jer. xiv. 21.

"The Lord called thy name a green olive-tree; fair and of goodly fruit," &c. -Jer. xi. 16.

And Salem's shrines were lighted
For other gods than Thee.

Then sunk the star of Solyma-
Then pass'd her glory's day,
Like heath that in the wilderness*
The wild wind whirls away.
Silent and waste her bowers,
Where once the mighty trod,
And sunk those guilty towers,
Where Baal reign'd as God.
"Go"-said the Lord-"Ye conquerors!
Steep in her blood your swords,
And raze to earth her battlements,+
For they are not the Lord's.
Till Zion's mournful daughter
O'er kindred bones shall tread,
And Hinnom's vale of slaughter+
Shall hide but half her dead!'

WHO IS THE MAID?
ST JEROME'S LOVE.§

(Air-BEETHOVEN.)

WHO is the Maid my spirit seeks,

Through cold reproof and slander's blight?
Has she Love's roses on her cheeks?

Is hers an eye of this world's light?
No-wan and sunk with midnight prayer
Are the bale looks of her I love;

Or if at times a light be there,
Its beam is kindled from above.

I chose her not, my soul's elect,

From those who seek their Maker's shrine

In gems and garlands proudly deck'd,
As if themselves were things divine.
No-Heaven but faintly warms the breast
That beats beneath a broider'd veil;

"For he shall be like the heath in the desert."-Jer. xvii. 6.

"Take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord's."-Jer. v. 10. "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they shall bury in Tophet till there be no place."—Jer. vii. 32. § These lines were suggested by a passage in St Jerome's reply to some calumnious remarks that had been circulated respecting his intimacy with the matron Paula.