33

Wake, for shame, my sluggish heart,
Wake, and gladly sing thy part;
Learn of birds, and springs, and flowers,
How to use thy nobler powers.

Call whole nature to thy aid,

Since 't was he whole nature made;
Join in one eternal song,
Who to one God all belong.

Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees, To show above the unwasted stars that pass In their old glory. O thou God of old ! Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these;

But so much patience as a blade of grass Grows by contented through the heat and cold.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Live forever, glorious Lord!

PARAPHRASE OF PSALM LXV.

DWELLERS beyond Thule's bands,
In fair lands,

At thy signs shall be affrighted.
Morn's bright gate, and ruddy west,
By their guest

Are with light and heat delighted.
Furrows else ploughed, sowed in vain,
By thy rain

Are with blades and ears maintained. Thou sendest rain into thy dales, And the vales,

Pranking them with curious flowers; And the stiffened earth mak'st soft With thy oft

Sweet and soft descending showers. Thou dost speed the seedman's hand, In the land

His dead-seeming seed reviving;

And the tender bud, unless

Thou didst bless,

Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings, as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What, though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What, though no real voice or sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing, as they shine,
"The hand that made us is divine."
JOSEPH ADDISON.

1712.

LOVE TO GOD.

The scriptural reference in the following hymn is to Habakkuk iii 17, 18.

PRAISE to God, immortal praise,
For the love that crowns our days!
Bounteous source of every joy,
Let thy praise our tongues employ.

For the blessings of the field,
For the stores the gardens yield;
For the vine's exalted juice,
For the generous olive's use;

Flocks that whiten all the plain;
Yellow sheaves of ripened grain;
Clouds that drop their fattening dews;
Suns that temperate warmth diffuse :
All that Spring with bounteous hand
Scatters o'er the smiling land ;
All that liberal Autumn pours
From her rich o'erflowing stores :

These to thee, my God, we owe,
Source whence all our blessings flow;
And for these my soul shall raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise.

Yet, should rising whirlwinds tear
From its stem the ripening ear;
Should the fig-tree's blasted shoot
Drop her green, untimely fruit;

Should the vine put forth no more,
Nor the olive yield her store;
Though the sickening flocks should fall,
And the herds desert the stall;

Should thine altered hand restrain The early and the latter rain; Blast each opening bud of joy, And the rising year destroy ;

1772.

Yet to thee my soul should raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise;
And, when every blessing 's flown,
Love thee for thyself alone.

MRS. A L. BARBAULD.

THANKSGIVING.

FOR Summer's bloom and autumn's blight, For bending wheat and blasted maize, For health and sickness, Lord of light, And Lord of darkness, hear our praise! We trace to thee our joys and woes,

To thee of causes still the cause, We thank thee that thy hand bestows; We bless thee that thy love withdraws.

We bring no sorrows to thy throne;
We come to thee with no complaint.
In providence thy will is done,

And that is sacred to the saint.

Here, on this blest Thanksgiving night,
We raise to thee our grateful voice;
For what thou doest, Lord, is right;
And, thus believing, we rejoice.

JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND.

NATURE AND MAN.

JAMES WARLEY MILES, a clergyman of the Protestan Episcopal Church, was born in South Carolina in 1818, and died in Charleston, August, 1875. For some time he was Professor of the History of Philosophy and Greek Literature in the College of Charleston, and he was also attached for a few years to Bishop Southgate's Mission to the Eastern Christians at Constantinople, but was obliged to return from abroad on account of ill-health. He thereafter devoted himself to the study of philology, preaching occasionally. He was at the time of his death in temporary charge of Grace Church, Charleston. His hymns were written to be read in connection with his sermons. Some of them have, however, been printed.

BEHOLD how nature is with teaching rife! — Man threads the wild, mysterious desert, where,

Midst seeming boundless space, come here and there

Flitting inhabitants, awakening life But for a moment round some palm-fringed well,

Then vanishing like a dream, leaving all drear And suddenly desolate, as though the spell Of silence never had been broken. Here Earth's scenic shifting flees, and only God is

near.

Man climbs the marvellous mountain, with its deep,

Rich-foliaged gorges, and its ever steep
And steeper rising precipices dread,
Until o'erhead,

In still, ethereal solitude, appears

its granite peak, which awfully uprears
Its inaccessible form, as bearing meet
Kindred to stars that proudly still retreat.

The stars look down on the vain mountain's love,

And man, o'er mount and stars, soars up to God above.

On some vast stream man floats in silent night, Hearing in awful hush

The river's mighty rush,

And marking how the rays from heaven's gemmed light

Are in the sweeping flood absorbed and broken;

And there he knows the token

That all his shattered aims, his hopes bewept, Are in God's counsels deep and fathomless onswept.

Ocean! great image of eternity,

And yet of fleeting time, of change, unrest,
Thou vast and wondrous realm of mystery,
Of thy great teachings too is man possessed.
Type of God's boundless might, the here and
there

Uniting, thou dost with a righteous fear
Man's heart ennoble, awe, and purify,
As in thy mighty, multitudinous tones echoes
of God roll by.

Before the dread volcano's fiery might,
Over the earthquake's dizzy surge, man cowers

35

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the English poet, was born in 1770, and graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1791. He published two brief poems the next year, with re luctance, and continued to write during the remainder of his life. His efforts were met with ridicule at first, but he has since been recognized as the foremost poet of nature and human life of his generation. He was poet-laureate after the death of Southey, and died on the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, April 23, 1850.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home :
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,—
He sees it in his joy.

The youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man

Forget the glories he hath known. And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pygmy size!
See, where mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human
life,

Shaped by himself with newly learned art,
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral, -
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his humorous stage With all the persons, down to palsied age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind,

Mighty prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by:
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height.
Why with such earnest pains dost thou pro-
voke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

NATURE'S

HARMONY.

37

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!

We, in thought, will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What, though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight;

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy

THERE is in stillness oft a magic power
To calm the breast, when struggling passions
lower;

Touched by its influence, in the soul arise
Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.
By this the Arab's kindling thoughts expand,
When circling skies enclose the desert sand;
For this the hermit seeks the thickest grove,
To catch the inspiring glow of heavenly love.
It is not solely in the freedom given
To purify and fix the heart on heaven ;
There is a spirit singing aye in air
That lifts us high above all mortal care.
No mortal measure swells that mystic sound.
No mortal minstrel breathes such tones
around,

The angels' hymn, the sovereign harmony That guides the rolling orbs along the sky, And hence perchance the tales of saints who viewed