punish us as with a father's hand.
We mites, cannot withstand
Thine anger; we are snow,
Thy wrath, the sun that melts us in its glow.

Make us not perish thus, eternal God,
From thy too heavy rod.
Recall that thy disdain
Alone doth give thy children bitter pain.

Yet I do know thy mercy doth abound
While yet the spheres turn round,
And thou wilt never cast
Without the man who humbles him at last.

Though great and many my transgressions are,
Thy goodness greater far
Than mine iniquity:
Lord, manifest thy mercy unto me!

LAMENT XIX

The Dream

Long through the night hours sorrow was my guest
And would not let my fainting body rest,
Till just ere dawn from out its slow dominions
Flew sleep to wrap me in its dear dusk pinions.
And then it was my mother did appear
Before mine eyes in vision doubly dear;
For in her arms she held my darling one,
My Ursula, just as she used to run
To me at dawn to say her morning prayer,
In her white nightgown, with her curling hair
Framing her rosy face, her eyes about
To laugh, like flowers only halfway out.
"Art thou still sorrowing, my son?" Thus spoke
My mother. Sighing bitterly, I woke,
Or seemed to wake, and heard her say once more:
"It is thy weeping brings me to this shore:
Thy lamentations, long uncomforted,
Have reached the hidden chambers of the dead,
Till I have come to grant thee some small grace
And let thee gaze upon thy daughter's face,
That it may calm thy heart in some degree
And check the grief that imperceptibly
Doth gnaw away thy health and leave thee sick,
Like fire that turns to ashes a dry wick.
Dost thou believe the dead have perished quite,
Their sun gone down in an eternal night?
Ah no, we have a being far more splendid
Now that our bodies' coarser claims are ended.
Though dust returns to dust, the spirit, given
A life eternal, must go back to heaven,
And little Ursula hath not gone out
Forever like a torch. Nay, cease thy doubt,
For I have brought her hither in the guise
She used to wear before thy mortal eyes,
Though mid the deathless angels, brighter far
She shineth as the lovely morning star;
And still she offers up her prayers for you
As here on earth, when yet no words she knew.
If herefrom springs thy sorrow, that her years
Were broken off before all that endears
A life on earth to mortals she might prove—
Yet think how empty the delights that move
The minds of men, delights that must give place
At last to sorrow, as in thine own case.
Did then thy little girl such joy confer
That all the comfort thou didst find in her
Could parallel thine anguish of today?
Thou canst not answer otherwise than nay.
Then fret not that so early death has come
To what was dearest thee in Christendom.
She did not leave a land of much delight,
But one of toil and grief and evil blight
So plenteous, that all which men can hold
Of their so transitory blessings, gold,
Must lose its value through this base alloy,
This knowledge of the grief that follows joy.
"Why do we weep, great God? That with her dower
She bought herself no lord, that she might cower
Before upbraidings from her husband's kin?
That she knew not the pangs that usher in
The newborn child? And that she could not know,
Like her poor mother, if more racking woe
It were to bear or bury them? Ah, meet
Are such delights to make the world more sweet!
But heaven hath purer, surer happiness,
Free from all