ied.

The very flocks are closely penned
By careful hands, lest they should gain
Sweet water from the babbling stream
Or wandering crop the dewy plain;
And bleating sheep and lowing kine
Within their barren stalls complain.

Moved by such penitence, full soon
God's grace repealed the stern decree
And curbed His righteous wrath; for aye,
When man repents, His clemency
Is swift to pardon and to hear
His children weeping bitterly.

Yet wherefore of that bygone race
Should we anew the story tell?
For Christ's pure soul by fasting long
The clogging bonds of flesh did quell;
He Whom the prophet's voice foretold
As GOD WITH US, Emmanuel.

Man's body--frail by nature's law
And bound by pleasure's easy chain--
He freed by virtue's strong restraint,
And gave it liberty again:
He broke the bonds of flesh, and Lust
Was driven from his old domain.

Deep in the inhospitable wild
For forty days He dwelt alone
Nor tasted food, till, thus prepared,
All human weakness overthrown
By fasting's power, His mortal frame
Rejoiced the spirit's sway to own.

The Adversary, marvelling
To see this creature of a day
Endure such toil, spent all his guile
To learn if God in human clay
Had come indeed; but soon rebuked
Behind His back fled shamed away.

Therefore let each with all his might
Follow the way the Master taught,
The law of consecrated life
Which Christ unto His servants brought;
Till, with the lusts of flesh subdued,
The spirit reigns o'er act and thought.

'Tis this our jealous foe abhors,
'Tis this the Lord of earth and sky
Approves; by this the soul is made
Thy holy altar, God Most High:
Faith stirs within the slumbering heart
And sin's corroding power must fly.

Swifter than water quenches fire,
Swifter than sunshine melts the snow,
Crushed out by soul-restoring fast
Vanish the sins that rankly grow,
If hand in hand with Abstinence
Sweet Charity doth ever go.

This too is Virtue's noble task,
To clothe the naked, and to feed
The destitute, with kindly care
To visit sufferers in their need;
For king and beggar each must bear
The lot by changeless Fate decreed.

Happy the man whose good right hand
Seeks but God's praise, and flings his gold
Broadcast, nor lets his left hand know
The gracious deed; for wealth unt