"Houses"—so the Wise Men tell me—
"Mansions"! Mansions must be warm!
Mansions cannot let the tears in,
Mansions must exclude the storm!
"Many Mansions," by "his Father,"
I don't know him; snugly built!
Could the Children find the way there—
Some, would even trudge tonight!
Far from my heavenly home,
Far from my Father’s breast,
Fainting I cry, blest Spirit, come
And speed me to my rest.
My spirit homeward turns
And fain would thither flee;
My heart, O Zion, droops and yearns,
When I remember thee.
To thee, to thee I press,
A dark and toilsome road;
When shall I pass the wilderness,
And reach the saint’s abode?
God of my life, be near;
On Thee my hopes I cast:
O guide me through the desert here,
And bring me home at last.
Whom does this stately Navy bring?
O! ‘tis Great Britain's Glorious King,
Convey him then, ye Winds and Seas,
Swift as Desire and calm as Peace.
In your Respect let him survey
What all his other Subjects pay;
And prophesie to them again
The splendid smoothness of his Reign.
Charles and his mighty hopes you bear:
A greater now then Cæsar's here;
Whose Veins a richer Purple boast
Then ever Hero's yet engrost;
Sprung from a Father so august,
He triumphs in his very dust.
Do I know Polly Brown? Do I know her? Why,
damme,
You might as well ask if I know my own name?
It's a wonder you never heard tell of old Sammy,
Her father, my mate in the Crackenback claim.
He asks if I know little Poll! Why, I nursed her
As often, I reckon as old Mother Brown
When they lived at the “Flats,” and old Sam
went a burster
In Chinaman's Gully, and dropped every crown.
My golden-haired mate, ever brimful of folly
The next word that I would unto thee say,
Is how thou mayst attain without delay,
Those blessed graces, and that holiness
Thou dost with so much godly zeal express
Thy love to, and thy longing to enjoy,
That sins and weakness might thee less annoy.
Know, then, as I have hinted heretofore,
And shall now speak unto a little more,
All graces in the person of the Son
Are by the Father hid, and therefore none
Can them obtain but they who with him close;
All others graceless are but only those;
Now the squatters and the “cockies,”
Shearers, trainers and their jockeys
Had gathered them together for a meeting on
the flat;
They had mustered all their forces,
Owners brought their fastest horses,
Monaro-bred - I couldn't give them greater praise
than that.
"Twas a lovely day in Summer -
What the blacksmith called “a hummer,”
If faithfull soules be alike glorifi'd
As Angels, then my fathers soul doth see,
And adds this even to full felecitie,
That valiantly I hels wide mouth o'stride:
But if our mindes to these soules be descry'd
By circumstances, and by signes that be
Apparent in us, not immediately,
How shall my mindes white truth by them be try'd?
They see idolatrous lovers weepe and mourne,
And vile blasphemous Conjurers to call
On Jesus name, and Pharisaicall
Dissemblers feigne devotion. Then turne
Father, part of his double interest
Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me,
His jointure in the knotty Trinity
He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest.
This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest,
Was from the world's beginning slain, and he
Hath made two Wills which with the Legacy
Of his and thy kingdom do thy Sons invest.
Yet such are thy laws that men argue yet
Whether a man those statutes can fulfil;
None doth; but all-healing grace and spirit
Revive again what law and letter kill.
Often Aner Clute at the gate
Refused me the parting kiss,
Saying we should be engaged before that;
And just with a distant clasp of the hand
She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
From the skating rink or the revival.
No sooner did my departing footsteps die away
Than Lucius Atherton,
(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)
Stole in at her window, or took her riding
Behind his spanking team of bays
Into the country.
The shock of it made me settle down,
A Lay Made About the Year Of The City CCCLX
I
Lars Porsena of Closium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.
II
East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet's blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan
