This last is quite regular, that is, the second stanza is arranged
precisely as the first, though such will not appear to be the case
without examination: the disposition of the lines, so various in length,
is confusing though not confused.
In these poems will be found that love of homeliness which is
characteristic of all true poets--and orators too, in as far as they are
poets. The meeting of the homely and the grand is heaven. One more.
A PRAYER FOR CHARITY.
Full of mercy, full of love,
Look upon us from above;
Thou who taught'st the blind man's night
To entertain a double light,
Thine and the day's--and that thine too:
The lame away his crutches threw;
The parched crust of leprosy
Returned unto its infancy;
The dumb amazed was to hear
His own unchain'd tongue strike his ear;
Thy powerful mercy did even chase
The devil from his usurped place,
Where thou thyself shouldst dwell, not he:
Oh let thy love our pattern be;
Let thy mercy teach one brother
To forgive and love another;
That copying thy mercy here,
Thy goodness may hereafter rear
Our souls unto thy glory, when
Our dust shall cease to be with men. _Amen._
CHAPTER XVI.
HENRY MORE AND RICHARD BAXTER.
Dr. Henry More was born in the year 1614. Chiefly known for his mystical
philosophy, which he cultivated in retirement at Cambridge, and taught
not only in prose, but in an elaborate, occasionally poetic poem, of
somewhere about a thousand Spenserian stanzas, called _A Platonic Song of
the Soul_, he has left some smaller poems, from which I shall gather good
store for my readers.
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