Think not that death against our nature is;
Think it a birth; and when thou go'st to die,
Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to bliss.

And if thou, like a child, didst fear before,
Being in the dark where thou didst nothing see;
Now I have brought thee torch-light, fear no more;
Now when thou diest thou canst not hood-wink'd be.

And thou, my soul, which turn'st with curious eye
To view the beams of thine own form divine,
Know, that thou canst know nothing perfectly,
While thou art clouded with this flesh of mine.

Take heed of over-weening, and compare
Thy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's train:
Study the best and highest things that are,
But of thyself an humble thought retain.

Cast down thyself, and only strive to raise
The story of thy Maker's sacred name:
Use all thy powers that blessed Power to praise,
Which gives the power to be, and use the same.

In looking back over our path from the point we have now reached, the
first thought that suggests itself is--How much the reflective has
supplanted the emotional! I do not mean for a moment that the earliest
poems were without thought, or that the latest are without emotion; but
in the former there is more of the skin, as it were--in the latter, more
of the bones of worship; not that in the one the worship is but