The world in solemn stillness lay To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats

O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains

They bend on hovering wing, And ever o'er its Babel-sounds The blessed angels sing.

But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;-
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing!

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;-
Oh, rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing!

For lo! the days are hastening on
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

EDMUND HAMILTON SEARS.

NATURE'S NESTLINGS.

Down in the dark, past the white of the snow Where the silence keeps watch, and a song cannot go,

Nestled all winter the rootlets that grew

In the summer-time past, when the fragrant winds blew.

Wise Mother Nature had put them to sleep And her children rest well, when her charges they keep.

Hopes that for mortals, like stars, fill all night With the splendor of dreams and prophetic delight; Pierce not the deeps where these buried things lie, For humanity's hopes have their birth in the sky.