Low before His cross to lie,
While I see Divine Compassion
Beaming in His gracious eye.[11]

[Footnote 11: "Floating in His languid eye" seems to have been the
earlier version.]

The influence of Sir Walter's family misfortune is evident also in the
mood out of which breathed his other trustful lines--

Peace, troubled soul, whose plaintive moan
Hath taught these rocks the notes of woe,

(changed now to "hath taught _these scenes_" etc).

Sir Walter Shirley, cousin of the Countess of Huntingdon, was born 1725,
and died in 1786. Even in his last sickness he continued to preach to
his people in his house, seated in his chair.

Rev. James Oswald Allen was born at Gayle, Yorkshire, Eng., June 24,
1743. He left the University of Cambridge after a year's study, and
became an itinerant preacher, but seems to have been a man of unstable
religious views. After roving from one Christian denomination to another
several times, he built a Chapel, and for forty years ministered there
to a small Independent congregation. He died in Gayle, Oct. 31, 1804.

The tune long and happily associated with "Sweet the Moments" is
"Sicily," or the "Sicilian Hymn"--from an old Latin hymn-tune, "O
Sanctissima."

"O FOR A CLOSER WALK WITH GOD."

The author, William Cowper, son of a clergyman, was born at
Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, Eng., Nov. 15, 1731, and died at Dereham,
Norfolk, April 25, 1800. Through much of his adult life he was afflicted
with a mental ailment inducing melancholia and at times partial
insanity, during which he once attempted suicide. He sought literary
occupation as an antidote to his disorder of mind, and besides a great
number of lighter pieces which diverted him and his friends, composed
"The Task," an able and delightful moral and domestic poetic treatise in
blank verse, and in the same style of verse translated Homer's _Odyssey_
and _Iliad_.

One of the most beloved of English poets, this suffering man was also a
true Christian, and wrote some of our sweetest and most spiritual hymns.
Most of these were composed at Olney, where he resided for a time with
John Newton, his fellow hymnist, and jointly with him issued the volume
known as the _Olney Hymns_.

_THE TUNE._

Music more or less closely identified with this familiar hymn is
Gardiner's "Dedham," and also "Mear," often attributed to Aaron
Williams. Both, about equally with the hymn, are seasoned by time, but
have not wor