These gracious lines shed Gospel light
On Mammon’s gloomiest cells,
As on some city’s cheerless night
The tide of sunrise swells,
Till tower, and dome, and bridge-way proud
Are mantled with a golden cloud,
And to wise hearts this certain hope us given;
“No mist that man may raise, shall hide the eye of Heaven.”

And oh! if e’en on Babel shine
Such gleams of Paradise,
Should not their peace be peace divine,
Who day by day arise
To look on clearer heavens, and scan
The work of God untouch’d by man? 
Shame on us, who about us Babel bear,
And live in Paradise, as if God was not there!

ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS.

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?  Hebrews i. 14.

Ye stars that round the Sun of righteousness
   In glorious order roll,
With harps for ever strung, ready to bless
   God for each rescued soul,
Ye eagle spirits, that build in light divine,
   Oh! think of us to-day,
Faint warblers of this earth, that would combine
Our trembling notes with your accepted lay.

Your amarant wreaths were earned; and homeward all,
   Flush’d with victorious might,
Ye might have sped to keep high festival,
   And revel in the light;
But meeting us, weak worldlings, on our way,
   Tired ere the fight begun,
Ye turned to help us in th’ unequal fray,
Remembering Whose we were, how dearly won: 

Remembering Bethlehem, and that glorious night
   When ye, who used to soar
Diverse along all space in fiery flight,
   Came thronging to adore
Your God new-born, and made a sinner’s child;
   As if the stars should leave
Their stations in the far ethereal wild,
And round the sun a radiant circle weave.

Nor less your lay of triumph greeted fair
   Our Champion and your King,
In that first strife, whence Satan in despair
   Sunk down on scathed wing: 
Abuse He fasted, and alone He fought;
   But when His toils were o’er,
Ye to the sacred Hermit duteous brought
Banquet and hymn, your Eden’s festal store.

Ye too, when lowest in th’ abyss of woe
   He plunged to save His sheep,
Were leaning from your golden thrones to know
   The secrets of that deep: 
But clouds were on His sorrow:  one alone
   His agonising call
Summoned from Heaven, to still that bitterest groan,
And comfort Him, the Comforter of all.

Oh! highest favoured of all Spirits create
   (If right of thee we deem),
How didst thou glide on brightening wing elate
   To meet th’ unclouded beam
Of Jesus from the couch of darkness rising! 
   How swelled thine anthem’s sound,
With fear and mightier joy weak hearts surprising,
“Your God is risen, and may not here be found!”