Is it as the stranger of the night,—gone, we heed not whither? Alas! thou foolish heart, whose thoughts are but as these, Alas! deluded soul, that hopeth thus of yesterday!

For behold-those temples of Ellora, the Brahmin's rock-built shrine,

Behold-yon granite cliff, which the North Sea buffeteth in vain, That stout old forest fir-these waking verities of life,

This guest abiding ever, not strange, nor a servant, but a son,— Such, O man, are vanity and dreams, transient as a rainbow on the cloud,

Weigh'd against that solid fact, thine ill-remember'd yesterday.

Come, let me show thee an ensample, where Nature shall in

struct us.

Luxuriantly the arguments for Truth spring native in her gardens;

Seek we yonder woodman of the plain; he is measuring his axe to the elm,

And anon the sturdy strokes ring upon the wintry air;

Eagerly the village school-boys cluster on the tighten❜d rope, Shouting, and bending to the pull, or lifted from the ground

elastic,

The huge tree boweth like Sisera boweth to its foes with faintness,

Its sinews crack,—deep groans declare the reeling anguish of

Goliath ;

The wedge is driven home,—and the saw is at its heart, and lo! with solemn slowness,

The shuddering monarch riseth from his throne,-toppled with a crash,—and is fallen!

Now, shall the mangled stump teach proud man a lesson; Now, can we from that elm-tree's sap distil the wine of Truth. Heed ye those hundred rings, concentric from the core, Eddying in various waves to the red bark's shore-like rim? These be the gatherings of yesterdays, present all to-day,

This is the tree's judgment, self-history that cannot be gainsaid. Seven years agone there was a drought, and the seventh ring is narrow'd,

The fifth from hence was half a deluge, the fifth is cellular and broad;

Thus, Man, thou art a result of the growth of many yesterdays, That stamp thy secret soul with growth of weal or woe;

Thou art an almanac of self, the living record of thy deeds; Spirit has its scars as well as body, sore and aching in their

season:

Here is a knot,—it was a crime: there is a canker,―selfishness; Lo, here the heart-wood rotten; lo, there, perchance, the sapwood sound;

Nature teacheth not in vain; thy works are in thee, of thee; Some present evil bent hath grown of older errors.

And what if thou be walking now uprightly? Salve not thy wounds with poison,

As if a petty goodness of to-day hath blotted out the sin of yes

terday.

It is well, thou hast life and light; and the Hewer showeth

mercy,

Dressing the root, pruning the branch, and looking for thy tardy fruits;

But even here, as thou standest, cheerful belike and careless, The stains of ancient evil are upon thee, the record of thy wrong is in thee:

For, a curse of many yesterdays is thine, many yesterdays of sin,

That, haply little heeded now, shall blast thy many morrows.

Shall then a man reck nothing, but hurl mad defiance at his

Judge,

Knowing that less than an omnipotent cannot make the has been, not been?

He ought, so Satan spake; he must, so Atheism urgeth;

He may, it was the libertine's thought; he doth,—the bad world

said it.

But thou of humbler heart, thou student wiser for simplicity, While Nature warmeth thee betimes, heed the loving counsel

of Religion.

True, this change is good, and penitence most precious;

But trust not thou thy change; nor rest upon repentance;

For we all are corrupted at the core, smooth as our surface

seemeth;

What health can bloom in a beautiful skin, when rottenness hath fed upon the bones?

And guilt is parcel of us all ; not thou, sweet nursling of affection, Art spotless, though so passing fair, nor thou, wild patriarch of

virtue;

Behold then the better tree of Life, free unto us all for grafting, Cut thee from the hollow root of self, to be budded on a richer vine, Be desperate, O man, as of evil so of good; tear that tunic from

thee;

The past can never be retriev'd, be the present what it may.
Vain is the penance and the scourge, vain the fast and vigil;
The fencer's cautious skill to-day, can this erase his scars?
It is man's to famish as a faquir, it is man's to die a devotee;
Light is the torture and the toil, balanced with the wages of

Eternity:

But, it is God's to yearn in love on the humblest, the poorest, and the worst;

For he has giv'n freely, as a King, asking only thanks for mercy. Look upon this noble-hearted Substitute; seeing thy woes, he pitied thee;

Bow'd beneath the mountain of thy sin and perish'd,-but for God-head.

There stood the Atlas in his power, and Prometheus in his love is there,

Emptying, on wretched man, the blessings earn'd from heav'n. Put them not away-hide them in thy breast, poor and penitent receiver;

Be gratitude thy counsellor to good, and wholesome fear unto obedience:

Remember the pruning knife is keen, cutting cankers even from

the vine;

Remember, twelve were chosen, and one among them liveth in perdition.

Yea, for standing unatoned, the soul is a bison on the prairie,
Hunted by those trooping wolves, the many sinful yesterdays:
And it speedeth a terrified Deucalion, flinging back the pebble
in his flight,—

The pebble that must add one more to those pursuing ghosts.
O man! there is a storm behind, should drive in thy bark to haven:
The foe, the foe, is on thy track, patient, certain and avenging ;
Day by day, solemnly and silently followeth the fearful past,-
His step is lame but sure; for he catcheth the present in eternity:
And how to escape that foe, the present-past in future?
How to avert that fate, living consequence of causes unexistent?
Boldly we must overleap his birth, and date above his memories,
Grafted on the living Tree that was before a yesterday;
No refuge of a younger birth than one that saw creation,
Can hide the child of time from still condemning yesterday.
There is the Sanctuary-city, mocking at the wrath of thine
Avenger,

Close at hand, with its wicket on the latch; haste for thy life, poor hunted one!

The gladiator, Guilt, fighteth as of old, armed with net and dagger;

Snaring in the mesh of yesterdays, stabbing with the poniard

of to-day;

Fly, thy sword is broken at the hilt; fly, thy shield is shiver'd; Leap the barriers and baffle him; the arena of the past is his. The bounds of guilt are the cycles of time; thou must be safe

within Eternity;

The arms of God alone shall rescue thee from yesterday.

A POET'S PARTING THOUGHT:*-MOTHERWELL.

WHEN I beneath the cold red earth am sleeping,
Life's fever o'er,

Will there for me be any bright eye weeping
That I'm no more?

Will there be any heart still memory keeping
Of heretofore?

When the great winds through leafless forests rushing,
Sad music make;

When the swollen streams, o'er crag and gully gushing,
Like full hearts break,-

Will there then one, whose heart despair is crushing,
Mourn for my sake?

When the bright sun upon that spot is shining,
With purest ray,

And the small flowers, their buds and blossoms twining,
Burst through that clay,—

Will there be one still on that spot repining
Lost hopes all day?

When no star twinkles with its eye of glory,
On that low mound,

And wintry storms have, with their ruins hoary,
Its loneness crown'd,—

Will there be then one, vers'd in misery's story,
Pacing it round ?—

It may be so, but this is selfish sorrow
To ask such meed,-

*These lines of Motherwell,-so touching, in their simple pathos, and so unselfish in the calm resignation of their close, -were given to a friend by the author, a day or two before his decease.