calls amain:
So look, so wait, so long, mine eyes,
To see my Lord, my sun, arise.

Wait, ye saints, wait on our Lord,
For from his tongue sweet mercy flows;
Wait on his cross, wait on his word;
Upon that tree redemption grows:
He will redeem his Israel
From sin and wrath, from death and hell.

I shall now give two stanzas of his version of the 127th Psalm.

If God build not the house, and lay
The groundwork sure--whoever build,
It cannot stand one stormy day.
If God be not the city's shield,
If he be not their bars and wall,
In vain is watch-tower, men, and all.

Though then thou wak'st when others rest,
Though rising thou prevent'st the sun,
Though with lean care thou daily feast,
Thy labour's lost, and thou undone;
But God his child will feed and keep,
And draw the curtains to his sleep.

Compare this with a version of the same portion by Dr. Henry King, Bishop
of Chichester, who, no great poet, has written some good verse. He was
about the same age as Phineas Fletcher.

Except the Lord the house sustain,
The builder's labour is in vain;
Except the city he defend,
And to the dwellers safety send,
In vain are sentinels prepared,
Or armed watchmen for the guard.

You vainly with the early light
Arise, or sit up late at night
To find support, and daily eat
Your bread with sorrow earned and sweat;
When God, who his beloved keeps,
This plenty gives with quiet sleeps.

What difference do we find? That the former has the more poetic touch,
the latter the greater truth. The former has just lost the one precious
thing in the psalm; the latter has kept it: that care is as useless as
painful, for God gives us while we sleep, and not while we labour.

CHAPTER XII.

WITHER, HERRICK, AND QUARLES.

George Wither, born in 1588, therefore about the same age as Giles
Fletcher, was a very different sort of writer indeed. There could hardly
be a greater contrast. Fancy, and all her motley train, were scarcely
known to Wither, save by the hearing of the ears.

He became an eager Puritan towards the close of his life, but his poetry
chiefly belongs to the earlier part of it. Throughout it is distinguished
by a certain straightforward simplicity of good English thought and
English word. His hymns remind me, in the form of their speech, of
Gascoigne. I shall quote but little; for, although there is a sweet calm
and a great justice o