While he was singing, the birds flew round him; the dogs accustomed to the music, were silent; and it even wafted the swarm of bees into their hive. Bowed down as he was by age, his figure was so tall, that from the distance where I stood he looked sufficiently erect. I remained until the old man had sung the twelfth and last verse of his morning hymn:
“Ready my course to finish,
And come, O God, to Thee;
A conscience pure I cherish,
Till death shall summon me.”
* * * * *
Nothing of God’s making can a man love rightly, without being the surer of God’s loving himself; neither the moon, nor the stars, nor a rock, nor a tree, nor a flower, nor a bird. Not the least grateful of my thanksgivings have been hymns that have come to my lips while I have been listening to the birds of an evening. Only let us love what God loves, and then His love of ourselves will feel certain, and the sight of his face we shall be sure of; and immortality, and heaven, and the freedom of the universe, will be as easy for us to believe in, as a father’s giving good gifts to his children.—Mountford.
MILTON’S HYMN OF PATIENCE.
By ELIZABETH LLOYD HOWELL.
I am old and blind!