This then must be the medicine for my woes--
To yield to what my Saviour shall dispose;
To glory in my baseness; to rejoice
In mine afflictions; to obey his voice,
As well when threatenings my defects reprove,
As when I cherished am with words of love;
To say to him, in every time and place,
"Withdraw thy comforts, so thou leave thy grace."
Surely this is as genuine an utterance, whatever its merits as a
poem--and those I judge not small--as ever flowed from Christian heart!
Chiefly for the sake of its beauty, I give the last passage of a poem
written upon occasion of the feasts of the Annunciation and the
Resurrection falling on the same day.
Let faithful souls this double feast attend
In two processions. Let the first descend
The temple's stairs, and with a downcast eye
Upon the lowest pavement prostrate lie:
In creeping violets, white lilies, shine
Their humble thoughts and every pure design.
The other troop shall climb, with sacred heat,
The rich degrees of Solomon's bright seat: _steps_
In glowing roses fervent zeal they bear,
And in the azure flower-de-lis appear
Celestial contemplations, which aspire
Above the sky, up to the immortal choir.
William Drummond of Hawthornden, a Scotchman, born in 1585, may almost be
looked upon as the harbinger of a fresh outburst of word-music.
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