Hear my prayer, O! Heavenly Father,
Ere I lay me down to sleep;
Bid thy Angels, pure and holy,
Round my bed their vigil keep.
My sins are heavy, but Thy mercy
Far outweighs them every one;
Down before Thy Cross I cast them,
Trusting in Thy help alone.
Keep me through this night of peril
Underneath its boundless shade;
Take me to Thy rest, I pray Thee,
When my pilgrimage is made.
None shall measure out Thy patience
By the span of human thought;
None shall bound the tender mercies
Which Thy Holy Son has bought.
Pardon all my past transgressions,
Give me strength for days to come;
Guide and guard me with Thy blessing
Till Thy Angels bid me home.
UVic Libraries, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial, https://creativecommons.org/lice nses/by-nc/4.0/.
Dickens, Charles. 'A Christmas Carol' from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Issue 10, Chapter 28 (December 1836): pp. 297-298. Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1836-12_Pickwick_Papers_A_Christmas_Carol.
I care not for Spring; on his fickle wing,
Let the blossoms and buds be borne:
He wooes them amain with his treacherous rain,
And he scatters them ere the morn.
An inconstant elf, he knows not himself,
Nor his own changing mind an hour,
He’ll smile in your face, and, with wry grimace,
He’ll wither your youngest flower.
Let the Summer sun to his bright home run,
He shall never be sought by me;
When he’s dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud,
And care not how sulky he be!
For his darling child is the madness wild
That sports in fierce fever’s train;
And when love is too strong, it don’t last long,
As many have found to their pain.
A mild harvest night, by the tranquil light
Of the modest and gentle moon,
Has a far sweeter sheen, for me, I ween,
Than the broad and unblushing noon.
But every leaf awakens my grief,
As it lieth beneath the tree;
So let Autumn air be never so far,
It by no means agrees with me.
But my song I troll out, for CHRISTMAS stout,
The heart, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old!
We’ll usher him in with a merry din
That shall gladden his joyous heart,
And we’ll keep him up, while there’s bite or sup,
And in fellowship good, we’ll part.
In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide
One jot of his hard-weather scars;
They’re no disgrace, for there’s much the same trace
On the cheeks of our bravest tars.
Then again I sing till the roof doth ring,
And it echoes from wall to wall –
To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night,
As the King of the Seasons all!
They have a superstition in the East,
That ALLAH, written on a piece of paper,
Is better unction than can come of priest,
Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper;
Holding, that any scrap which bears that name,
In any characters, its front imprest on,
Shall help the finder through the purging flame,
And give his toasted feet a place to rest on.
Accordingly, they make a mighty fuss,
With ev’ry wretched tract and fierce oration,
And hoard the leaves – for they are not, like us,
A highly civilized and thinking nation:
And, always stooping in the miry ways,
To look for matter of this earthy leaven,
They seldom, in their dust-exploring days,
Have any leisure to look up to Heaven.
So have I known a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth
Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters:
And yet, where they who should have ope’d the door
Of charity and light, for all men’s finding,
Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,
And rent the Book, in struggles for the binding.
The gentlest man among these pious Turks,
God’s living image ruthlessly defaces;
Their best high-churchman, with no faith in works,
Bowstrings the Virtues in the market-places:
The Christian Pariah, whom both sects curse
(They curse all other men, and curse each other),
Walks thro’ the world, not very much the worse –
Does all the good he can, and loves his brother.
My life may chequered be with scenes of misery and pain,
And’t may be my fate to struggle with adversity in vain:
Regardless of misfortunes tho’ howe’er bitter they may be,
I shall always have one retrospect, a hallowed one to me,
And it will be of that happy time when first I gazed on thee.
Blighted hopes, and prospects drear, for me will lose their sting,
Endless troubles shall harm not me, when fancy on the wing
A lapse of years shall travel o’er, and again before me cast
Dreams of happy fleeting moments then for ever past:
Not any worldly pleasure has such magic charms for me
E’en now, as those short moments spent in company with thee;
Life has no charms, no happiness, no pleasures, now for me
Like those I feel, when ’tis my lot Maria, to gaze on thee.