Therefore, never is their strife
After those true joys to spur;
In this lean and little life
They half witted deeply err,

Seeking here their bliss to gain,
That is, God Himself, in vain.

Ah! I know not in my thought
How enough to blame their sin,
Nor so clearly as I ought

Can I show their fault within;

For, more bad and vain are they
And more sad than I can say.

All their hope is to acquire

Worship, goods, and worldly weal;
When they have their mind's desire,
Then such witless Joy they feel,
That in folly they believe

Those True joys they then receive.

Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs, of thistles?" Alfred is of the Wise Teacher's school and bids us seek the chief good beyond this evil world.

XX. OF GOD AND HIS CREATURES.

O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas,- -Terrarum cœlique sator, qui tempus ab ævo

Eala min Drihten !

That thu eart ælmihtig,
Micel modilic,

Mærthum gefraege,
And wundorlic,
Witena gehwylcum!

5

O thou, my Lord Almighty, great and wise,
Wellseen for mighty works, and marvellous
To every mind that knows thee, Ever Good!
Wondrously well all creatures Thou hast made,
Unseen of us or seen; with softest band

Of skilful strength thy brighter beings leading,
Thou from its birth forth onward to its end
This middle earth by times hast measured out
As was most fit; that orderly they go

And eftsoon come again. Thou wisely stirrest
To thine own will thy changing unstill creatures,
Unchangeable and still thyself for ever!

No one is mightier, greater than Thou art,

No one was made thine equal: need was none,

Of all these works which thou hast wrought, to Thee;

But, at the willing of thy power, the world

And everything within it didst thou make,
Without all need to Thee of such great works,
Great is thy goodness,-think it out who will;
For it is all of one, in everything,

Thou and Thy good; thine own; not from without,

Neither did any goodness come to Thee :

But, well I know, thy goodness is Most Good
All with thyself: unlike to us in kind;

To us, from outwardly, from God himself,
Came all we have of good in this low earth.
Thou canst not envy any; since to Thee
Nothing is like, nor any higher skilled;

For thou, All good, of thine own thought didst think,
And then that thought didst work. Before Thee none
Was born, to make or unmake anything,

But Thou without a model madest all,

Lord God of men, Almighty, very good,