Only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love,
By name to come call'd charity, the soul
Of all the rest; then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shall possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far.
This is the month, and this the happy morn,
wherein the Son of heaven's eternal King,
of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born,
our great redemption from above did bring.
O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the checkered shade. And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.
But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge .
How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!
If the will, which in the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness,--a horrid thought!
Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl, When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.