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I questioned not her peace with God,
Nor pried into her guiltless mind,
Like those unskilful surgeon-priests
Who rack the soul with probings blind.

For I've seen men who meant not ill
Compelling doctrine out of Death,
With Hell and Heaven acutely poised
Upon the turning of a breath;

While agonizing judgments hung
Ev'n on the Saviour's helpful name;
As mild Madonna's form, of old,
A hideous torture-tool became.

I could but say, with faltering voice
And eyes that glanced aside to weep,
"Be strong in faith and hope, my child;
He giveth his beloved sleep.

"And though thou walk the shadowy vale
Whose end we know not, He will aid;
His rod and staff shall stay thy steps.'
"I know it well," she siniled and said.

She knew it well, and knew yet more My deepest hope, though unexprest, The hope that God's appointed sleep But heightens ravishment with rest.

My children, living flowers, shall come And strew with seed this grave of thine, And bid the blushing growths of Spring Thy dreary painted cross entwine.

Thus Faith, cast out of barren creeds, Shall rest in emblems of her own; Beauty still springing from Decay, The cross-wood budding to the crown.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in bur nished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:

O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.,

H. D. THOREAU.
[U. S. A.]
INSPIRATION.

IF with light head erect I sing,
Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,
The verse is weak and shallow as its

source.

But if with bended neck I grope,
Listening behind me for my wit,
With faith superior to hope,
More anxious to keep back than for-
ward it;

Making my soul accomplice there
Unto the flame my heart hath lit,
Then will the verse forever wear,
Time cannot bend the line which God
has writ.

They have builded him an altar in the I hearing get, who had but ears,

evening dews and damps;

And sight, who had but eyes before;

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It is nothing now,

ELIZABETH LLOYD HOWELL. When heaven is opening on my sight

[U. S. A.]

MILTON'S PRAYER IN BLINDNESS.

I AM old and blind!

less eyes?

When airs from paradise refresh my

brow,

The earth in darkness lies.

In a purer clime

Men point at me as smitten by God's My being fills with rapture,

frown;

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thought

waves of

Roll in upon my spirit, - strains sublime Break over me unsought.

Give me my lyre!

I feel the stirrings of a gift divine: Within my bosom glows unearthly fire, Lit by no skill of mine.

C. F. ALEXANDER.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES.

By Nebo's lonely mountain
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab
There lies a lonely grave.

And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er,

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth:
Noiselessly as the daylight
Comes back when night is done,

And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun.

Noiselessly as the spring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves;
So without sound of music
Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain's crown
The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle
On gray Beth-Peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyrie
Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion, stalking,
Still shuns that hallowed spot,

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O lonely grave in Moab's land!

O dark Beth-Peor's hill!

Speak to these curious hearts of ours, And teach them to be still.

God hath his mysteries of grace,

For beast and bird have seen and heard Ways that we cannot tell;

That which man knoweth not.

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He hides them deep, like the hidden

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