My good, O Lord, thy gift--thy strength, my stay--
Give what thou bidst, and then bid what thou wilt.
Work with me what of me thou dost request;
Then will I dare the worst and love the best.

Here, from another poem, are two little stanzas worth preserving:

Yet God's must I remain,
By death, by wrong, by shame;
I cannot blot out of my heart
That grace wrought in his name.

I cannot set at nought,
Whom I have held so dear;
I cannot make Him seem afar
That is indeed so near.

The following poem, in style almost as simple as a ballad, is at once of
the quaintest and truest. Common minds, which must always associate a
certain conventional respectability with the forms of religion, will
think it irreverent. I judge its reverence profound, and such none the
less that it is pervaded by a sweet and delicate tone of holy humour. The
very title has a glimmer of the glowing heart of Christianity:


NEW PRINCE, NEW POMP.

Behold a silly,[69] tender babe,
In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies;