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   What though in poor and humble guise
      Thou here didst sojourn, cottage-born?
   Yet from Thy glory in the skies
      Our earthly gold Thou dost not scorn.
   For Love delights to bring her best,
And where Love is, that offering evermore is blest.

   Love on the Saviour's dying head
      Her spikenard drops unblamed may pour,
   May mount His cross, and wrap Him dead
      In spices from the golden shore;
   Risen, may embalm His sacred name
With all a Painter's art, and all a Minstrel's flame.

   Worthless and lost our offerings seem,
      Drops in the ocean of His praise;
   But Mercy with her genial beam
      Is ripening them to pearly blaze,
   To sparkle in His crown above,
Who welcomes here a child's as there an angel's love.

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY


When they saw Him, they besought Him that He would depart out of their coasts. St. Matthew viii. 34.

      They know the Almighty's power,
   Who, wakened by the rushing midnight shower,
      Watch for the fitful breeze
   To howl and chafe amid the bending trees,
      Watch for the still white gleam
   To bathe the landscape in a fiery stream,
   Touching the tremulous eye with sense of light
Too rapid and too pure for all but angel sight.

      They know the Almighty's love,
   Who, when the whirlwinds rock the topmost grove,
      Stand in the shade, and hear
   The tumult with a deep exulting fear,
      How, in their fiercest sway,
   Curbed by some power unseen, they die away,
   Like a bold steed that owns his rider's arm,
Proud to be checked and soothed by that o'er-mastering chains.