Quit its vain scenes without a tear, Without a trouble or a fear, And mingle with the dead, While conscience, like a faithful friend, And cheer our dying breath; Shall when all other comforts cease, And smooth the bed of death. COTTON. TO THE RISING SUN. Sweet orb! how fair dost thou appear Emerging from thy wat❜ry bed! The shades that veil'd our hemisphere Before thy presence all are fled! To thee we owe the cheerful day, To ancient chaos would be hurl'd! Thou speak'st the wonder-working hand, I love, in thy refulgence bright, To contemplate His works below: And rise, thro' these, to worlds of light, Where more resplendent planets glow ! But, ah! fair orb! how faint thy gleam! How mean the blessings thou canst give, Compared with His more glorious beam, Beneath whose ray believers live! 'Tis Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, Who drives the shadows from the breast! Gives to the troubled conscience peace, And makes the soul supremely blest! Did thousand suns around me shine, Would seem divinely fair and bright! Dear Saviour, o'er my bosom still Thy sacred, healing beams display! And guide me to thy holy hill, Where reigns an endless, blissful day! TO THE SETTING SUN. Fair orb of the evening, how glorious thy ray, Thy splendour how lovely, how holy thy light; Thou seemest to bid a farewell to the day, And to hail the approach of all-shadowing night. With pleasure I view thee, yet mingled with sad ness, As I think how the glory of day-light is fled, That past are the hours of life and of gladness, And nature will rise with the sun of to-morrow, And beauty and life will revisit the plain. Still, still thou dost tell me the night of the grave To the day-time of life will too quickly succeed, When the charms of the fair and the deeds of the brave, And the poet that sung them there's no one will heed. But oh! there's a morning, whose dawning so bright, Shall rouse man from his slumbers to beauty and bloom; A sun shall arise, and his glorious light, Shall scatter the clouds which hang over the tomb. THE RETURN, From the far west where Dee, the princely halls |