3 . Four Score

I COUNT the mercifullest part of all

God’s mercies, in this coil of eighty years,

Is that no sense of being disappears

Or fails,—I see the signal, hear the call,—

Can calmly estimate the rise and fall

Of moth-like mortals in this ‘vale of tears’,

And all His glorious works, the heavenly spheres,

The ocean, and the earth’s unyielding wall

Remain for thought and wonder! Marvellous

Is God’s creation, with its endless space,

And those inhabited, bright worlds, by law

Divinely govern’d, as they shine on us,

Still keeping through all time their ordered place:

I bow my head in rapture and in awe!