Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
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MANY 1 are the sayings of the wise, | |
In ancient and in modern books enrolled | |
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude; | |
And to the bearing well of all calamities, | |
All chances incident to man’s frail life, | 5 |
Consolatories writ | |
With studied argument, and much persuasion sought, | |
Lenient of grief and anxious thought; | |
But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound | |
Little prevails, or rather seems a tune | 10 |
Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint, | |
Unless he feel within | |
Some source of consolation from above, | |
Secret refreshings that repair his strength, | |
And fainting spirits uphold. | 15 |
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God of our fathers! what is man | |
That Thou towards him with hand so various, | |
Or might I say contrarious, | |
Temperest Thy Providence through his short course, | |
Not evenly, as Thou rul’st | 20 |
The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, | |
Irrational and brute? | |
Nor do I name of men the common rout, | |
That, wandering loose about, | |
Grow up and perish, as the summer fly, | 25 |
Heads without name, no more rememberèd; | |
But such as Thou hast solemnly elected, | |
With gifts and graces eminently adorned, | |
To some great work, Thy glory, | |
And people’s safety, which in part they effect; | 30 |
Yet toward these thus dignified, Thou oft | |
Amidst their highth of noon, | |
Changest Thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard | |
Of highest favours past | |
From Thee on them, or them to Thee of service. | 35 |
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Not only dost degrade them, or remit | |
To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, | |
But throw’st them lower than Thou didst exalt them high; | |
Unseemly falls in human eye, | |
Too grievous for the trespass or omission; | 40 |
Oft leavest them to the hostile sword | |
Of heathen and profane, their carcases | |
To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived; | |
Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, | |
And condemnation of th’ ingrateful multitude. | 45 |
If these they ’scape, perhaps in poverty | |
With sickness and disease thou bow’st them down, | |
Painful diseases and deformed, | |
In crude old age, | |
Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering, | 50 |
The punishment of dissolute days; in fine, | |
Just or unjust alike seem miserable; | |
For oft alike both come to evil end. | |
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Just are the ways of God, | |
And justifiable to men, | 55 |
Unless there be who think not God at all. | |
If any be, they walk obscure; | |
For of such doctrine never was there school, | |
But the heart of the fool, | |
And no man therein doctor but himself. | 60 |
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All is best, though we oft doubt, | |
What the unsearchable dispose | |
Of highest wisdom brings about, | |
And ever best found in the close. | |