Third Sunday in Lent.
“Followers of God, as dear children.”
—Epistle for the Day.
Bend, Angel! from thy throne of bliss,
A living type to see
Whose pureness, in a world like this,
Partakes of heaven and thee:—
With lisping grace, and lovely awe,
God's infant kneels in prayer,
Looking, as if by faith it saw
What lips cannot declare:
For oh! that face with worship rife
Tells more than tones convey,—
Soft pulses of a secret life
Deep in the bosom play.
On earth, my Saviour once enwreath'd
Around a sinless child
His loving arms, and o'er it breathed
A blessing deep as mild.
And still, His breath of awful Love
So charms our inward ear,
That children seem to God above
Angelically near.
In vain would plastic Sculpture dream
It moulds such beauty now;
Or, poet-words reflect the gleam
That sanctifies thy brow.
For, earth and heaven around thee twine
A double charm, which glows
With more than marble can define,
Or lyre-born language knows.
How blest, to watch thy myriad ways
Of fawn-like grace and glee,
And call thee bright as vernal rays,
Or, sun-tints on the sea!
Or, hear the music of thy mind
In broken lisps of song,
Whose echo seems the spring-toned wind
O'er leaflets borne along.
Elastic as the vital breeze
Thy fairy motions glide,
With flexures of infantile ease
To each glad step supplied.
While golden locks in glitt'ring play
Like woven sunbeams dance,
And purer than the young-eyed May
Thy soul's ethereal glance;
And buds and blossoms, too, of thought
Betray their beauteous spell,—
Telling, that Christ within hath wrought
What Angels love so well.
