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The comforts I to all prefer

Are solitude and love.

Nor exile I, nor prison fear;
Love makes my courage great;
I find a Saviour everywhere,
His grace in every state.

Nor castle walls, nor dungeons deep,
Exclude His quickening beams;
There I can sit, and sing, and weep,
And dwell on heavenly themes.

There sorrow, for His sake, is found
A joy beyond compare ;
There no presumptuous thoughts abound,
No pride can enter there.

A Saviour doubles all my joys,

And sweetens all my pains,
His strength in my defence employs,
Consoles me and sustains.

I fear no ill, resent no wrong,

Nor feel a passion move,

When malice whets her slanderous

tongue;

Such patience is in love.

SCENES FAVOURABLE TO MEDITATION.

WILDS horrid and dark with o'ershadowing trees, Rocks that ivy and briers infold,

Scenes Nature with dread and astonishment sees, But I with a pleasure untold;

Though awfully silent, and shaggy, and rude,
I am charmed with the peace ye afford;
Your shades are a temple where none will intrude,
The abode of my Lover and Lord.

I am sick of thy splendour, O fountain of day,
And here I am hid from its beams;
Here safely contemplate a brighter display
Of the noblest and holiest of themes.

Ye forests, that yield me my sweetest repose,
Where stillness and solitude reign,

To you I securely and boldly disclose
The dear anguish of which I complain.

Here, sweetly forgetting, and wholly forgot
By the world and its turbulent throng,

The birds and the streams lend me many a note
That aids meditation and song.

Here, wandering in scenes that are sacred to night,
Love wears me and wastes me away;

And often the sun has spent much of his light

Ere yet I perceive it

day.

While a mantle of darkness envelopes the sphere,
My sorrows are sadly rehearsed;

To me the dark hours are all equally dear,
And the last is as sweet as the first.

Here I and the beasts of the desert agree;
Mankind are the wolves that I fear:
They grudge me my natural right to be free,
But nobody questions it here.

Though little is found in this dreary abode
That appetite wishes to find,

My spirit is soothed by the presence of God,
And appetite wholly resigned.

Ye desolate scenes, to your solitude led,

My life I in praises employ,

And scarce know the source of the tears that I shed,
Proceed they from sorrow or joy.

There's nothing I seem to have skill to discern ;
I feel out my way in the dark;

Love reigns in my bosom, I constantly burn,
Yet hardly distinguish a spark.

I live, yet I seem to myself to be dead;
Such a riddle is not to be found;

I am nourished without knowing how I am fed,
I have nothing, and yet I abound.

O Love! who in darkness art pleased to abide, Though dimly yet surely I see

That these contrarieties only reside

In the soul that is chosen of Thee.

Ah send me not back to the race of mankind,

Perversely by folly beguiled:

For where, in the crowds I have left, shall I find The spirit and heart of a child?

Here let me, though fixed in a desert, be free; A little one whom they despise,

Though lost to the world, if in union with Thee Shall be holy and happy and wise.

TRANSLATIONS OF THE LATIN POEMS OF MILTON.

ELEGIES.

ELEGY I.

TO CHARLES DEODATI.

AT length, my friend, the far-sent letters come,
Charged with thy kindness, to their destined home;
They come, at length, from Deva's western side,
Where prone she seeks the salt Vergivian tide.
Trust me, my joy is great that thou shouldst be,
Though born of foreign race, yet born for me,
And that my sprightly friend, now free to roam,
Must seek again so soon his wonted home.

I well content, where Thames with influent tide
My native city laves, meantime reside,
Nor zeal nor duty now my steps impel
To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell.
Nor aught of pleasure in those fields have I,
That, to the musing bard, all shade deny.
'Tis time that I a pedant's threats disdain,
And fly from wrongs my soul will ne'er sustain.
If peaceful days, in lettered leisure spent
Beneath my father's roof, be banishment,
Then call me banished, I will ne'er refuse
A name expressive of the lot I chuse.
I would that, exiled to the Pontic shore,
Rome's hapless bard had suffered nothing more;
He then had equalled even Homer's lays,
And Virgil! thou hadst won but second praise.
For here I woo the Muse, with no control;
And here my books-my life-absorb me whole.
Here too I visit, or to smile, or weep,
The winding theatre's majestic sweep;
The grave or gay colloquial scene recruits
My spirits, spent in learning's long pursuits,
Whether some senior shrewd, or spendthrift heir,
Suitor, or soldier now unarmed, be there;
Or some coifed brooder o'er a ten years' cause
Thunder the Norman gibberish of the laws.
The lacquey there oft dupes the wary sire,
And artful speeds the enamoured son's desire.

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