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HYMN FOR EVENING.
The beam-repelling mists arise,
And evening spreads obscurer skies;
The twilight will the night forerun,
And night itself be soon begun.
Upon thy knees devoutly bow,
And pray the Lord of glory now
To fill thy breast, or deadly sin
May cause a blinder night within.
And whether pleasing vapours rise,
Which gently dim the closing eyes,
Which make the weary members blest
With sweet refreshment in their rest;
Or whether spirits[158] in the brain
Dispel their soft embrace again,
And on my watchful bed I stay,
Forsook by sleep, and waiting day;
Be God for ever in my view,
And never he forsake me too;
But still as day concludes in night,
To break again with new-born light,
His wondrous bounty let me find
With still a more enlightened mind.
* * * * *
Thou that hast thy palace far
Above the moon and every star;
Thou that sittest on a throne
To which the night was never known,
Regard my voice, and make me blest
By kindly granting its request.
If thoughts on thee my soul employ,
My darkness will afford me joy,
Till thou shalt call and I shall soar,
And part with darkness evermore.
Many long and elaborate religious poems I have not even mentioned,
because I cannot favour extracts, especially in heroic couplets or blank
verse. They would only make my book heavy, and destroy the song-idea. I
must here pass by one of the best of such poems, The Complaint, or Night
Thoughts of Dr. Young; nor is there anything else of his I care to
quote.
I must give just one poem of Pope, born in 1688, the year of the
Revolution. The flamboyant style of his Messiah is to me detestable:
nothing can be more unlike the simplicity of Christianity. All such,
equally with those by whatever hand that would be religious by being
miserable, I reject at once, along with all that are merely commonplace
religious exercises. But this at least is very unlike the rest of Pope's
compositions: it is as simple in utterance as it is large in scope and
practical in bearing. The name Jove may be unpleasant to some ears: it
is to mine--not because it is the name given to their deity by men who
had had little outward revelation, but because of the associations which
the wanton poets, not the good philosophers, have gathered about it. Here
let it stand, as Pope meant it, for one of the names of the Unknown God.
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