And fast beside the olive-bordered way
Stands the blessed home where Jesus deigned to stay,
   The peaceful home, to Zeal sincere
   And heavenly Contemplation dear,
Where Martha loved to wait with reverence meet,
And wiser Mary lingered at Thy sacred feet.

Still through decaying ages as they glide,
Thou lov’st Thy chosen remnant to divide;
   Sprinkled along the waste of years
   Full many a soft green isle appears: 
Pause where we may upon the desert road,
Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.

When withering blasts of error swept the sky,
And Love’s last flower seemed fain to droop and die,
   How sweet, how lone the ray benign
   On sheltered nooks of Palestine! 
Then to his early home did Love repair,
And cheered his sickening heart with his own native air.

Years roll away:  again the tide of crime
Has swept Thy footsteps from the favoured clime
   Where shall the holy Cross find rest? 
   On a crowned monarch’s mailed breast: 
Like some bright angel o’er the darkling scene,
Through court and camp he holds his heavenward course serene.

A fouler vision yet; an age of light,
Light without love, glares on the aching sight: 
   Oh, who can tell how calm and sweet,
   Meek Walton, shows thy green retreat,
When wearied with the tale thy times disclose,
The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose?

Thus bad and good their several warnings give
Of His approach, whom none may see and live: 
   Faith’s ear, with awful still delight,
   Counts them like minute-bells at night. 
Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn,
While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne.

But what are Heaven’s alarms to hearts that cower
In wilful slumber, deepening every hour,
   That draw their curtains closer round,
   The nearer swells the trumpet’s sound? 
Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die,
Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT

And when these things begin to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth night.  St. Luke xxi. 28.

Not till the freezing blast is still,
Till freely leaps the sparkling rill,
And gales sweep soft from summer skies,
As o’er a sleeping infant’s eyes
A mother’s kiss; ere calls like these,
No sunny gleam awakes the trees,
Nor dare the tender flowerets show
Their bosoms to th’ uncertain glow.

Why then, in sad and wintry time,
Her heavens all dark with doubt and crime,
Why lifts the Church her drooping head,
As though her evil hour were fled? 
Is she less wise than leaves of spring,
Or birds that cower with folded wing? 
What sees she in this lowering sky
To tempt her meditative eye?