XI.

DREAMS.

OH! miserable power

To dreams allowed, to raise the guilty past,
And back awhile the illumined spirit to cast
On its youth's twilight hour;-

In mockery guiling it to act again

The revel or the scoff in Satan's frantic train!

Nay, hush thee, angry heart!

An Angel's grief ill fits a penitent;
Welcome the thorn-it is divinely sent,

And with its wholesome smart

Shall pierce thee in thy virtue's home serene,

And warn thee what thou art, and whence thy wealth

has been.

d.

*

XII.

CONFESSION.

My smile is bright, my glance is free,
My voice is calm and clear;
Dear friend, I seem a type to thee

Of holy love and fear.

But I am scanned by eyes unseen,
And these no saint surround;
They mete what is by what has been,
And joy the lost is found.

Erst my good Angel shrank to see
My thoughts and ways of ill;

And now he scarce dare gaze on me,

Scar-seamed and crippled still.

d.

XIII.

AWE.

I BOW at Jesus' Name, for 'tis the Sign
Of awful mercy towards a guilty line.—
Of shameful ancestry, in birth defiled,

And upwards from a child

Full of unlovely thoughts and rebel aims

As hastening judgment flames,

How can I lightly view my Means of life?—

The Just assailing sin, and death-strained in the strife!

And so, albeit His woe is our release,

Thought of that woe aye dims our earthly peace;
The life is hidden in a Fount of Blood!-

And this is tidings good,

But in the Angels' reckoning, and to those

Who Angel-wise have chose

And kept, like Paul, a virgin course, content

To go where Jesus went;

But for the many, laden with the spot

And earthly taint of sin, 'tis written, "Touch Me not."

d.

*

XIV.

THE CROSS OF CHRIST.

"Ad omnem progressum atque promotum, ad omnem aditum et exitum, ad vestitum, ad calciatum, ad lavacra, ad mensas, ad lumina, ad cubilia, ad sedilia, quacunque nos conversatio exercet, frontem Crucis signaculo terimus." Tertull. de Corona, § 3.

WHENE'ER across this sinful flesh of mine

I draw the Holy Sign,

All good thoughts stir within me, and collect
Their slumbering strength divine;

Till there springs up that hope of God's elect
My faith shall ne'er be wrecked.

And who shall say, but hateful spirits around,
For their brief hour unbound,

Shudder to see, and wail their overthrow?

While on far heathen ground

Some lonely Saint hails the fresh odour, though
Its source he cannot know.

d.

FORGIVENESS.

XV.

THE THREE ABSOLUTIONS.*

"And there shall in nowise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life."

EACH morn and eve, the Golden Keys

Are lifted in the sacred hand,

To show the sinner on his knees

Where heaven's bright doors wide open stand.

On the dread Altar duly laid

The Golden Keys their witness bear,
That not in vain the Church hath pray'd,

That He, the Life of Souls, is there.

1. In the Daily Service. 2. In the Communion. 3. In the Visitation of the Sick.