* * * * *
O Spirit of Adoption! spread
Thy wings enamouring o'er my head;
O Filial love immense!
Raise me to love intense;
O Father, source of love divine,
My powers to love and hymn incline!
While God my Father I revere,
Nor all hell powers, nor death I fear;
I am my Father's care;
His succours present are.
All comes from my loved Father's will,
And that sweet name intends no ill.
God's Son his soul, when life he closed,
In his dear Father's hands reposed:
I'll, when my last I breathe,
My soul to God bequeath;
And panting for the joys on high,
Invoking Love Paternal, die.
Born in 1657, one of the later English Platonists, John Norris, who, with
how many incumbents between I do not know, succeeded George Herbert in
the cure of Bemerton, has left a few poems, which would have been better
if he had not been possessed with the common admiration for the
rough-shod rhythms of Abraham Cowley.
Here is one in which the peculiarities of his theories show themselves
very prominently. There is a constant tendency in such to wander into the
region half-spiritual, half-material.
THE ASPIRATION.
How long, great God, how long must I
Immured in this dark prison lie;
My soul must watch to have intelligence;
Where at the grates and avenues of sense
Where but faint gleams of thee salute my sight,
Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night?
When shall I leave this magic sphere,
And be all mind, all eye, all ear?
How cold this clime! And yet my sense
Perceives even here thy influence.
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