Confirm thy former deed;
Reform that is defiled;
I was, I am, I will remain
Thy charge, thy choice, thy child.
Here are some neat stanzas from a poem he calls
CONTENT AND RICH.
My conscience is my crown,
Contented thoughts my rest;
My heart is happy in itself,
My bliss is in my breast.
My wishes are but few,
All easy to fulfil;
I make the limits of my power
The bounds unto my will.
Sith sails of largest size
The storm doth soonest tear,
I bear so small and low a sail
As freeth me from fear.
And taught with often proof,
A tempered calm I find
To be most solace to itself,
Best cure for angry mind.
No chance of Fortune's calms
Can cast my comforts down;
When Fortune smiles I smile to think
How quickly she will frown.
And when in froward mood
She proves an angry foe:
Small gain I found to let her come,
Less loss to let her go.
There is just one stanza in a poem of Daniel, who belongs by birth to
this group, which I should like to print by itself, if it were only for
the love Coleridge had to the last two lines of it. It needs little
stretch of scheme to let it show itself amongst religious poems. It
occurs in a fine epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. Daniel's writing
is full of the practical wisdom of the inner life, and the stanza which I
quote has a certain Wordsworthian flavour about it.
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