friend

An unconverted state; or, Converting grace.

[Great King of glory and of grace,
We own, with humble shame,
How vile is our degen'rate race,
And our first father's name.]

From Adam flows our tainted blood,
The poison reigns within;
Makes us averse to all that's good,
And willing slaves to sin.

[Daily we break thy holy laws,
And then reject thy grace;
Engaged in the old serpent's cause,
Against our Maker's face.l

We live estranged afar from God,
And love the distance well;

The names and titles of Christ. From several scriptures.

With cheerful voice I sing
The titles of my Lord,
And borrow all the names
Of honor from his word:
Nature and art can ne'er supply
Sufficient forms of majesty.

In Jesus we behold
His Father's glorious face,
Shining for ever bright,
With mild and lovely rays
Th' eternal God's eternal Son
Inherits and partakes the throne.]

The sovereign King of kings,
The Lord of lords most high,
Writes his own name upon

The names and titles of Christ. From several scriptures.

['Tis from the treasures of his word
I borrow titles for my Lord;
Nor art nor nature can supply
Sufficient forms of majesty.

Bright image of the Father's face,
Shining with undiminished rays;
Th' eternal God's eternal Son,
The heir and partner of his throne.]

The King of kings, the Lord most high,
Writes his own name upon his thigh
He wears a garment dipped in blood,
And breaks the nations with his rod.

The vane on Hughley steeple
Veers bright, a far-known sign,
And there lie Hughley people
And there lie friends of mine.
Tall in their midst the tower
Divides the shade and sun,
And the clock strikes the hour
And tells the time to none.

To south the headstones cluster,
The sunny mounds lie thick;
The dead are more in muster
At Hughley than the quick.
North, for a soon-told number,
Chill graves the sexton delves,
And steeple-shadowed slumber
The slayers of themselves.

"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es. IV.

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:

"Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie
Caught in the unstopped ear;

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff.
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few find him pleasant enough.

His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
(Leastways if you reckon two thumbs);
He used to be one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.

He sits in a beautiful parlour,

Why sit ye idly dreaming all the day,
While the golden, precious hours flit away?
See you not the day is waning, waning fast?
That the morn's already vanished in the past?

When the glowing noon approaches, we will rest
Who have worked through all the morning; but at best,
If you work with zeal and ardor till the night,
You can only make the wasted moments right.

Think you life was made for dreaming, nothing more,
When God's work lies all unfinished at your door?

Imprimis he was "broke." Thereafter left
His Regiment and, later, took to drink;
Then, having lost the balance of his friends,
"Went Fantee" -- joined the people of the land,
Turned three parts Mussulman and one Hindu,
And lived among the Gauri villagers,
Who gave him shelter and a wife or twain.
And boasted that a thorough, full-blood sahib
Had come among them. Thus he spent his time,
Deeply indebted to the village shroff
(Who never asked for payment), always drunk,
Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels;

No matter how hard I listen, the wind speaks
One syllable, which has no comfort in it--
Only a rasping of air through the dead elm.

*

Once a poet told me of his friend who was torn apart
By two pigs in a field in Poland. The man
Was a prisoner of the Nazis, and they watched,
He said, with interest and a drunken approval . . .
If terror is a state of complete understanding,

Then there was probably a point at which the man
Went mad, and felt nothing, though certainly

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,