The FLOWER. From the same

While sad my Heart, and blasted mourns, How chearing, Lord, and thy Returns, How sweet the Life, the Joys they bring! Grief in thy Presence melts away. Refresh'd I hail the gladsome Day, As Flow'rs salute the rising Spring.

Who would have thought my wither'd Heart Again should feel thy sov'reign Art, A kindly Warmth again should know? Late like the Flow'r, whose drooping Head Sinks down, and seeks its native Bed To see the Mother-Root below.

These are thy Wonders, Lord of Pow'r, Killing and Quick'ning! One short Hour Lifts up to Heav'n, and sinks to Hell: Thy Will supreme disposes All; We prove thy Justice in our Fall, Thy Mercy in our Rise we feel.

O that my Latest Change were o'er! O were I plac'd where Sin no more With its Attendant Grief, could come! Stranger to Change, I then should rise Amidst the Plants of Paradise, And flourish in Eternal Bloom.

Many a Spring since here I grew, I seem'd my Verdure to renew, And higher still to rise and higher: Water'd by Tears, and fan'd by Sighs, I pour'd my Fragrance thro' the Skies, And heav'nward ever seem'd t' aspire.

But while I grow, as Heav'n were mine, Thine Anger comes, and I decline; Faded my Bloom, my Glory lost: Who can the deadly Cold sustain, Or stand beneath the chilling Pain When blasted by thine Anger's Frost?

And now in Age I bud again, Once more I feel the Vernal Rain, Tho' dead so oft I live and write: Sure I but dream! It cannot be That I, my GOD, that I am He On whom thy Tempests fell all Night!

These are thy Wonders, Lord of Love, Thy Mercy thus delights to prove We are but Flow'rs that bloom and die! Soon as This saving Truth we see, Within thy Garden plac'd by Thee, Time we survive, and Death defy.