The morning shines,—to church they haste away,
And noisy guns proclaim the wedding day;
Within three weeks to the dark grave they’re borne,
To slumber till the Resurrection morn!
Around, the neighbours mourn their hapless lot,
And weeping children haunt the dreary spot;
The lippering wave, rais’d by the nightly gale,
Tells to the Moon her melancholy tale!
ON SOME WHO HAD LEFT US, AND SPOKEN DISRESPECTFULLY OF US!
“There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.” (Proverbs xxx. 12.)
Yes! once they met with us, and gave us the hand,
Uniting to sing and to pray;
But long could not bear the rigid command,
So off they went lilting away!
Forsaking the vulgar, whom now they despise,
For doctrines more learned and pure;—
This cutting off hands, and plucking out eyes,
This doctrine they could not endure!
They speak of perfection, but oft with disdain,
Our faults and our failings expose;
Because this perfection they cannot attain,
They’ll plead for their muffs and their boas!
So lofty their eyelids, so lofty their looks,
They’ll laugh at a sinner in tears;
Their prayers are lock’d up in their finely bound books,
While they’re trimming their necks and their ears!
The new birth’s convulsions they cannot have felt,
Or they dare not speak as they do;
Their heart is too proud into nothing to melt,
And must, while to mammon they bow.