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And had he not high honor,

The hillside for his pall;

To lie in state while angels wait

With stars for tapers tall;

And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave;

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave?—

In that deep grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again- most wondrous thought!—
Before the judgment day,

And stand with glory wrapped around

On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life

With the Incarnate Son of God.

O, lonely tomb 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-
Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the secret sleep
Of him he loved so well.

Mrs. Cecil Francis Alexander.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control

Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage,-what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,-'t was a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

Lord Byron.

THE LOST CHORD.

Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an Angel's Psalm
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexéd meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,

That came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.

Adelaide A. Proctor.

HYMN TO THE NIGHT.

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—
From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

THE BARDS.

When the sweet day in silence hath departed,
And twilight comes with dewy, downcast eyes,
The glowing spirits of the mighty-hearted
Like stars around me rise.

Spirits whose voices pour an endless measure,
Exhaustless as the choral founts of night,

Until my trembling soul, oppressed with pleasure,
Throbs in a flood of light.

Old Homer's song in mighty undulations

Comes surging ceaseless up the oblivious main:-I hear the rivers from succeeding nations

Go answering down again.

Hear Virgil's strain through pleasant pastures strolling,
And Tasso's sweeping round through Palestine,
And Dante's deep and solemn river rolling.
Through groves of midnight pine.

I hear the iron Norseman's numbers ringing
Through frozen Norway like a herald's horn;
And like a lark, hear glorious Chaucer singing
Away in England's morn.

In Rhenish halls, still hear the pilgrim lover
Chant his wild story to the wailing strings,
Till the young maiden's eyes are brimming over
Like the full cup she brings.

And hear from Scottish hills the souls unquiet
Pouring in torrents their perpetual lays,
As their impetuous mountain runnels riot
In the long rainy days;

The world-wide Shakspeare-the imperial Spenser:
Whose shafts of song o'ertop the angels' seats,—
While, delicate as from a silver censer,

Float the sweet dreams of Keats!

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