John Keble

'Tis sweet, as year by year we lose Friends out of sight, in faith to muse How grows in Paradise our store.

Why should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh?

The watchful mother tarries nigh Though sleep have closed her infant's eye, For should he wake, and find her gone, She knows she could not bear his moan.

Love masters agony; the soul that seemed Forsaken, feels her present God again, And in her Father's arms Contented dies away.

Give us grace to listen well.

Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look When hearts are of each other sure; Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook, The haunt of all affections pure.

Soft as Memnon's harp at morning, To the inward ear devout, Touched by light, with heavenly warning Your transporting chords ring out. Every leaf in every nook, Every wave in every brook,

Time's waters will not ebb, nor stay.

When the shore is won at last, Who will count the billows past?

Sprinkled along the waste of years Full many a soft green isle appears: Pause where we may along the desert road, Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.

Abide with me from morn till eve, For without Thee I cannot live: Abide with me when night is nigh, For without Thee I dare not die.

Sun of my soul! thou Saviour dear, It is not night if Thou be near: Oh, may no earth-born cloud arise To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes!

And help us, this and every day, To live more nearly as we pray.

The trivial round, the common task, Would furnish all we ought to ask.

When you find yourself, as I daresay you sometimes do, overpowered as it were by melancholy, the best way is to go out, and do something kind to somebody or other.

The voice that breathed o'er Eden, That earliest wedding day, The primal marriage blessing, It hath not passed away.

The deeds we do, the words we say,— Into still air they seem to fleet, We count them ever past; But they shall last, In the dread judgment they And we shall meet!

As fire is kindled by fire, so is a poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.