Sweet Jesu! will then.  Let no more
  This leper haunt and soil thy door. 
      Cure him, ease him;
      O release him! 
  And let once more, by mystic birth,
  The Lord of life be born in earth.

The fitting companion to this is his

  EASTER HYMN.

  Death and darkness, get you packing: 
  Nothing now to man is lacking. 
  All your triumphs now are ended,
  And what Adam marred is mended. 
  Graves are beds now for the weary;
  Death a nap, to wake more merry;
  Youth now, full of pious duty,
  Seeks in thee for perfect beauty;
  The weak and aged, tired with length
  Of days, from thee look for new strength;
  And infants with thy pangs contest,
  As pleasant as if with the breast.

  Then unto him who thus hath thrown
  Even to contempt thy kingdom down,
  And by his blood did us advance
  Unto his own inheritance—­
  To him be glory, power, praise,
  From this unto the last of days!

We must now descend from this height of true utterance into the Valley of Humiliation, and cannot do better than console ourselves by listening to the boy in mean clothes, of the fresh and well-favoured countenance, whom Christiana and her fellow-pilgrims hear singing in that valley.

  He that is down, needs fear no fall;
    He that is low, no pride;
  He that is humble ever shall
    Have God to be his guide.

  I am content with what I have,
    Little be it or much;
  And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
    Because thou savest[155] such.

  Fulness to such a burden is
    That go on pilgrimage;
  Here little, and hereafter bliss,
    Is best from age to age.

I could not have my book without one word in it of John Bunyan, the tinker, probably the gipsy, who although born only and not made a poet, like his great brother, John Milton, has uttered in prose a wealth of poetic thought.  He was born in 1628, twenty years after Milton.  I must not, however, remark on this noble Bohemian of literature and prophecy; but leaving at length these flowery hills and meadows behind me, step on my way across the desert.—­England had now fallen under the influence of France instead of Italy, and that influence has never been for good to our literature, at least.  Thence its chief aim grew to be a desirable trimness of speech and logical arrangement of matter—­good external qualities purchased at a fearful price with the loss of all that makes poetry precious.  The poets of England, with John Dryden at their head, ceased almost for a time to deal with the truths of humanity, and gave themselves to the facts and relations of society.  The nation which could recall the family of the Stuarts must necessarily fall into such a decay of spiritual life as should render its literature only respectable at the best, and its religious utterances essentially vulgar.  But the decay is gradual.