shall find Thee, and everything shall have His attribute to sing! And having tuned the lute, he played and sang some of the verses from the following poem: 'SUNDAY. 'O day most calm, most bright, 'The other days and thou Make up one man, whose face thou art, Knocking at heaven with thy brow. The worky days are the back part; 'Man had straightforward gone 'Sundays the pillars are, On which heav'n's palace arched lies. And hollow room with vanities. 'The Sundays of man's life, 'This day my Saviour rose, 'The rest of our creation Our great Redeemer did remove With the same shake, which at His passion Did th' earth and all things with it move. As Samson bore the doors away, Christ's hands, though nail'd, wrought our salvation, And did unhinge that day. 'The brightness of that day Thou art a day of mirth : And where the week-days trail on ground, Thy flight is higher, as thy birth: Oh, let me take thee at the bound, Leaping with thee from sev'n to sev'n, Till that we both, being toss'd from earth, Fly hand in hand to heaven.' George Herbert. The father of Dr. Isaac Watts was a Nonconformist, and was imprisoned in Southampton Gaol for the sake of his convictions. The old prison remains very nearly the same as when the young mother sat with her child looking up to the barred windows of the room where her husband was confined. It stands upon what was then the beach of the fair Southampton Water, which at that time rolled much further in, and almost washed the prison doors. From the tower of this prison a lovely scene opens to the view-charming hills on the left, the 'sweet fields beyond the swelling flood' on the opposite shore. It was this view across Southampton Water which in afteryears suggested the beautiful hymn to the prisoner's son, Dr. Isaac Watts: 'There is a land of pure delight, 'Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 'But tim'rous mortals start and shrink 'Oh, could we make our doubts remove, 'Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er, Not Jordan's stream nor death's cold flood Wilberforce, while walking through one of the busy London streets, was heard by one who passed him to be repeating aloud Cowper's hymn : 'Far from the world, O Lord, I flee, 'The calm retreat, the silent shade, 'There, if Thy Spirit touch the soul, Oh! with what peace, and joy, and love 'There, like the nightingale, she pours Nor asks a witness of her song, 'Author and Guardian of my life, 'What thanks I owe Thee, and what love! Shall echo through the realms above When time shall be no more!' |