DESPAIRING SORROW.

Salisbury. As true as I believe you think them false

That give you cause to prove my saying true.

Const. O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,
Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die,
And let belief and life encounter so

As doth the fury of two desperate men

Which in the very meeting fall and die.

Lewis marry Blanch! O boy, then where art thou?
France friend with England, what becomes of me?
Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight:
This news hath made thee a most ugly man. . . .
Arthur. I do beseech you, madam, be content.
Const. If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,
Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,

Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,
Patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks,

I would not care, I then would be content,
For then I should not love thee, no, nor thou
Become thy great birth nor deserve a crown.
But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,
Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great :
Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast
And with the half-blown rose. But Fortune, O,
She is corrupted, changed and won from thee!
Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings!
A widow cries; be husband to me, heavens !
Let not the hours of this ungodly day

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Wear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset,

Set armed discord 'twixt these perjured kings!

Hear me, O, hear me ! . . .

King Philip. Patience, good lady: Comfort, gentle Con

stance.

Constance. No, I defy all counsel, all redress,

But that which ends all counsel, true redress,
Death, death; O, amiable, lovely death! . . .
King Philip. O, fair affliction, peace!

Constance. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry.
O! that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth;
Then with a passion I would shake the world,

And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy
Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice,

Which scorns a widow's invocation.

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven :

If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,

To him that did but yesterday suspire,

There was not such a gracious creature born,

But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,
And so he 'll die; and, rising so again,

When I shall meet him in the court of heaven

DESPAIRING SORROW.

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I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son !
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!

King John, Act iii. Sc. 1, l. 1; Sc. 4, 1. 22.

Hungering for Spiritual Food.

"Give me the interior beauties of the soul." SOCRATES.

It cannot be too often repeated, where it continues still unknown or for gotten, that man has a soul as certainly as he has a body; nay, much more certainly; that properly it is the course of his unseen, spiritual life which informs and rules his external visible life, rather than receives rule from it; in which spiritual life, indeed, and not in any outward action or condition arising from it, the true secret of his history lies, and is to be sought after and indefinitely approached.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

POOR soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward wall so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,1

1 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. — - 1 Cor.

ix. 27.

HUNGERING FOR SPIRITUAL FOOD.

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy1 terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.2

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Sonnet, cxlvi.

1 Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding. - Prov. xxiii. 23.

2 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. - 1 Cor. xv. 26.