“From glen, and plain, and city
      Let gracious incense rise;
    The Lord of life and pity
      Hath heard His creatures’ cries: 
    And where in fierce oppression
      Stalk’d fever, fear, and dearth,
    He pours a triple blessing
      To fill and fatten earth!

    “Gaze round in deep emotion;
      The rich and ripened grain
    Is like a golden ocean
      Becalm’d upon the plain;
    And we who late were weepers,
      Lest judgment should destroy,
    Now sing, because the reapers
      Are come again with joy!

    “O praise the Hand that giveth,
      And giveth evermore,
    To every soul that liveth
      Abundance flowing o’er! 
    For every soul He filleth
      With manna from above,
    And over all distilleth
      The unction of His love.

    “Then gather, Christians, gather,
      To praise with heart and voice
    The good Almighty Father
      Who biddeth you rejoice: 
    For He hath turned the sadness
      Of His children into mirth,
    And we will sing with gladness
      The harvest-home of Earth.”

My “Song of Seventy,” published more than forty years ago, has been exceedingly popular; and I here make this extract from an early archive-book respecting it:—­“Dr. Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, was so pleased with this said ‘Song of Seventy’ that he posted off to Hatchards’ forthwith (after seeing it quoted anonymously in the Athenaeum) to inquire the author’s name.”  It was published in “One Thousand Lines.”  I composed it during a solitary walk near Hurstperpoint, Sussex, in 1845, near about when I wrote “Never give up.”

* * * * *

Of my several ballads upon Gordon (I think there were nine of them) I will here enshrine one, printed in the newspapers of May 1884, and perhaps worthiest to be saved from evanescence:—­

      “If England had but spoken
        With Wellesley’s lion roar,
      Or flung out Nelson’s token
        Of duty as of yore,
    We should not now, too late, too late,
      Be saddened day by day,
    Dreading to hear of Gordon’s fate,
      The victim of delay.

      “He felt in isolation
        ‘Civis Romanus sum,’
      And trusted his great nation
        Right sure that help would come: 
    Could he have dreamt that British power
      Which placed him at his post,
    In peril’s long-expected hour
      Would leave him to be lost?

      “He lives alone for others,—­
        Himself he scorns to save,
      And ev’n with savage brothers
        Will share their bloody grave! 
    Woe! woe to us! should England’s glory,
      To our rulers’ blame,
    Close gallant Gordon’s wondrous story,
      England! in thy shame.”

This was half prophetic at the time, and we all have grieved for England’s Christian hero ever since.