e whole.

LAMENT XVIII

We are thy thankless children, gracious Lord.
The good thou dost afford
Lightly do we employ,
All careless of the one who giveth joy.

We heed not him from whom delights do flow.
Until they fade and go
We take no thought to render
That gratitude we owe the bounteous sender.

Yet keep us in thy care. Let not our pride
Cause thee, dear God, to hide
The glory of thy beauty:
Chasten us till we shall recall our duty.

Yet punish us as with a father's hand.
We mites, cannot withstand
Thine anger; we are snow,
Thy wrath, the sun that melts us in its glow.

Make us not perish thus, eternal God,
From thy too heavy rod.
Recall that thy disdain
Alone doth give thy children bitter pain.

Yet I do know thy mercy doth abound
While yet the spheres turn round,
And thou wilt never cast
Without the man who humbles him at last.

Though great and many my transgressions are,
Thy goodness greater far
Than mine iniquity:
Lord, manifest thy mercy unto me!

LAMENT XIX

The Dream

Long through the night hours sorrow was my guest
And would not let my fainting body rest,
Till just ere dawn from out its slow dominions
Flew sleep to wrap me in its dear dusk pinions.
And then it was my mother did appear
Before mine eyes in vision doubly dear;
For in her arms she held my darling one,
My Ursula, just as she used to run
To me at dawn to say her morning prayer,
In her white nightgown, with her curling hair
Framing her rosy face, her eyes about
To laugh, like flowers only halfway out.
"Art thou still sorrowing, my son?" Thus spoke
My mother. Sighing bitterly, I woke,
Or seemed to wake, and heard her say once more:
"It is thy weeping brings me to this shore:
Thy lamentations, long uncomforted,
Have reached the hidden chambers of the dead,
Till I have come to grant thee some small grace
And let thee gaze upon thy daughter's face,
That it may calm thy heart in some degree
And check the grief that imperceptibly
Doth gnaw away thy health and leave thee sick,
Like fire that turns to ashes a dry wick.
Dost thou believe the dead have perished quite,
Their sun gone down in an eternal night?
Ah no, we have a being far more splendid
Now that our bodies' coarser claims are ended.
Though dust returns to dust, the spirit, given
A life eternal, must go back to heaven,
And little Ursula hath not gone out
Forever like a torch. Nay, cease thy doubt,
For I have brought her hither in the guise
She use