His psalms and hymns are immeasurably better than his lyrics.  Dreadful some of them are; and I doubt if there is one from which we would not wish stanzas, lines, and words absent.  But some are very fine.  The man who could write such verses as these ought not to have written as he has written:—­

  Had I a glance of thee, my God,
    Kingdoms and men would vanish soon;
  Vanish as though I saw them not,
    As a dim candle dies at noon.

  Then they might fight and rage and rave: 
    I should perceive the noise no more
  Than we can hear a shaking leaf
    While rattling thunders round us roar.

Some of his hymns will be sung, I fancy, so long as men praise God together; for most heartily do I grant that of all hymns I know he has produced the best for public use; but these bear a very small proportion indeed to the mass of his labour.  We cannot help wishing that he had written about the twentieth part.  We could not have too much of his best, such as this: 

  Be earth with all her scenes withdrawn;
  Let noise and vanity begone: 
  In secret silence of the mind
  My heaven, and there my God, I find;

but there is no occasion for the best to be so plentiful:  a little of it will go a great way.  And as our best moments are so few, how could any man write six hundred religious poems, and produce quality in proportion to quantity save in an inverse ratio?

Dr. Thomas Parnell, the well-known poet, a clergyman, born in Dublin in 1679, has written a few religious verses.  The following have a certain touch of imagination and consequent grace, which distinguishes them above the swampy level of the time.

  HYMN FOR EVENING.

  The beam-repelling mists arise,
  And evening spreads obscurer skies;
  The twilight will the night forerun,
  And night itself be soon begun. 
  Upon thy knees devoutly bow,
  And pray the Lord of glory now
  To fill thy breast, or deadly sin
  May cause a blinder night within. 
  And whether pleasing vapours rise,
  Which gently dim the closing eyes,
  Which make the weary members blest
  With sweet refreshment in their rest;
  Or whether spirits[158] in the brain
  Dispel their soft embrace again,
  And on my watchful bed I stay,
  Forsook by sleep, and waiting day;
  Be God for ever in my view,
  And never he forsake me too;
  But still as day concludes in night,
  To break again with new-born light,
  His wondrous bounty let me find
  With still a more enlightened mind.

* * * * *

  Thou that hast thy palace far
  Above the moon and every star;
  Thou that sittest on a throne
  To which the night was never known,
  Regard my voice, and make me blest
  By kindly granting its request. 
  If thoughts on thee my soul employ,
  My darkness will afford me joy,
  Till thou shalt call and I shall soar,
  And part with darkness evermore.