Nor have our trumpets summoned
The Morning from her dewy bed:
As yet her roses are unblown,
Nor by her purple mantle known.
All night we in the Temple keep,
Not yielding to the charms of sleep;
That so we might with zealous prayer
Our thoughts and cleansed hearts prepare,
To celebrate the ensuing light.
This annual Feast to Memory

Is sacred, nor with us must die.

*

What numbers from the sun's up-rise,
From where he leaves the morning skies,
Of our dispersed Abrahamites,
This Vesper to their homes invites !
Yet we, in yearly triumph still,
A Lamb for our deliverance kill.
Since liberty our confines fled,
Given with the first unleavened bread,
She never would return; though bought
With wounds, and in destruction sought;
Some stray to Libya's scorched sands,
Where horned Hammon's temple stands:
To Nilus some, where Philip's son,
Who all the rifled Orient won,
Built his proud city; others gone
To their old prison, Babylon :
A part to freezing Taurus fled;
And Tiber, now the ocean's head-
Our ruins all the world have filled:
But you, by use in suffering skilled,
Forgetting in remoter climes
Our vanisht glory, nor those times,
Those happy times, compare with these,
Your burdens may support with ease.
More justly we of fate complain
Who servitude at home sustain ;
We to perpetual woes designed,

In our own country Egypt find.

The following verses, by the same Chorus are equally

touching and harmonious:

Yet this no less our grief provokes,

Our kindred bear divided yokes;

One part by Roman bondage wrung;
The other two by brothers, sprung
From savage Idumæans, whom
Our fathers have so oft o'ercome.
O Thou, the Hope, the only One
Of our distress, and ruin'd throne;
Of whom with a prophetic tongue,
To Judah dying Jacob sung:
The crowned muse on ivory lyre,
His breast inflamed with holy fire,
This oft foretold,-That thou should'st free
The people consecrate to thee;

That Thou, triumphing, should'st revoke
Sweet Peace, then never to be broke;
When freed Judæa should obey
Our Lord, and all affect his sway.
O when shall we behold thy face,
So often promised to our race?
If prophets, who have won belief,
By our mishaps and flowing grief,
Of joyful change, as truly sung;
Thy absence should not now be long.
Thee, by thy virtue, we entreat;
The Temple's veil, the Mercy's Seat,
That Name by which our fathers sware,
Which in our vulgar speech we dare
Not utter, to compassionate

Thy kindred's tears, and ruined state.
Hast to our great redemption, hast,
O, thou most Holy! and at last

Bless with thy Presence, that we may
To Thee our vows devoutly pay.

Sandys was gathered to his fathers in the beginning of March, 1643. He expired at Bexley, the residence of his niece, Lady Margaret Wyat, who was married to a descendant of the poetical friend of Surrey, and was buried in the parish church upon the 7th of March. One of his contemporaries, Phillpot of Clare Hall, compared his death to the sudden departure of a flowery spring. But the simile was not happily chosen. He had not, indeed, exhausted the allotted term of human existence, and the setting of so mild and cheering a star might well awaken the sigh of regret;

but the harvest had been gathered in, and the sheaves were bound up. He had passed a religious and useful life, and had opened a new spring of comfort to his christian brethren, which was not without a beneficial influence upon the stream of our literature. No cloud appears to have darkened the evening of his days: he lived and died among his friends, admired, beloved, and revered. "It did me good," says Baxter, "when Mrs. Wyatt invited me to see Bexley Abbey, in Kent, to see upon the old stone wall in the garden, a summer-house, with this inscription, that 'In that place Mr. George Sandys, after his travels over the world, retired himself for his poetry and contemplations."" Of his character, we can only judge from his writings; but his portrait is preserved at Ormsberley Court, and the full benignant eye, and placid forehead, accord with the gentle spirit of his verse.

Sandys occupies a very interesting position among our minor poets. Pope, who when a child of eight years, had been delighted with Ogilby's Homer, was equally pleased with Sandys' translation of Ovid; and Dryden declared him to be the best versifier of his time. His Paraphrase of the Psalms was esteemed by Burney the most harmonious in our language. He was a master of versification, and, although excelling chiefly in lyric measures, could construct the polished couplet with the art of Pope. The lines prefixed to his Paraphrase of the Psalms are polished and musical:

Our graver Muse from her long dream awakes ;
Peneian Groves, and Cirrha's caves forsakes:
Inspired with zeal, she climbs th' ethereal Hills
Of Solyma, where bleeding balm distills;
Where Trees of Life unfading youth assure,
And Living Waters all diseases cure.

Lord Falkland justly praised his flowing elegance; his diction is pure and simple; and his fancy, although

deficient in the richness of Crashaw and the energy of Quarles, often imparts a pleasing lustre to the subject. Without rivalling the quaint pathos of Herbert, his strains glow with the same fervour of piety, and he rarely deviates into the eccentricities of that amiable poet. Sandys had not been dazzled by the splendid errors which bewildered the more powerful genius of Cowley; and it should be mentioned to his honour, that he brought no offering from pagan mythology to the Altar of Heavenly Truth, and that the translator of the Metamorphoses is not recognised in the translator of the Psalms. The gentleness and simplicity of his manner will be seen in the following version of the forty-second Psalm.

PSALM XLII.

Lord! as the hart embost with heat
Brays after the cool rivulet,

So sighs my soul for thee.

My soul thirsts for the living God:
When shall I enter his abode,

And there his beauty see?

Tears are my food both night and day;
While, Where's thy God? they daily say;
My soul in plaints I shed;
When I remember, how in throngs
We filled thy house with praise and songs;
How I their dances led.

My soul, why art thou so deprest?
Why, O! thus troubled in my breast;
With grief so overthrown?
With constant hope on God await:
I yet his name shall celebrate,
For mercy timely shown.

My fainting heart within me pants:
My God, consider my complaints;

My songs shall praise thee still,
Even from the vale where Jordan flows;
Where Hermon his high forehead shows,
From Mitzar's humble hill.

Deeps unto deeps enraged call,
When thy dark spouts of waters fall,
And dreadful tempest raves:

For all thy floods upon me burst,
And billows after billows thrust
To swallow in their graves.

But yet by day the Lord will charge
His ready mercy to enlarge

My soul, surprised with cares;

He gives my songs their argument;
God of my life, I will present

By night to thee my prayers;

And say, My God, my Rock, O why
And I forgot, and mourning die,

By foes reduced to dust?

Their words, like weapons pierce my bones;
While still they echo to my groans,
Where is the Lord thy trust?

My soul, why art thou so deprest?
O why so troubled in my breast?
Sunk underneath thy load!
With constant hope on God await:
For I his name shall celebrate,
My Saviour and my God.

Fuller mentions Sandys with lively interest.

"He

lived," are his words, “to be a very aged man, whom I saw in the Savoy, anno 1641, having a youthful soul in a decayed body."