Fold its wings, and soothe with the warmth of its plumage.

Then brighten, O Queen, the cold grey ashes of thy grief;

Tune again with joy thy broken heart-strings:

For while his praise through England's land is heard,

Their melody hath not wholly pass'd away.
Light up with festal breadth thy shadowy life;
Soothe thy stripes with the balm of joyful hope:
For to him, the loosening of the silver cord,
The breaking of the golden bowl, was but the glad
Fulfilment of a long and joyful dream.

M. R. C.

PART III.

Birthdays of Later Life.

PART III.

BIRTHDAYS OF LATER LIFE.

Now the evening of life is beginning to cast its shadows around our path-shadows deepening rapidly as we advance, until they are lost in the darkness of the night of the grave—a night, however, which the Gospel, and a variety of analogies in nature, instruct us, is so far from being the end of our existence, that it is but the certain prelude to the morning of a day that shall know no end.

66 ac

Goëthe styles some of our English poets complished misanthropes," on account of their gloomy weariness of life. Whole volumes, he says, might be compiled from their works, which would serve as a commentary to this frightful text:"

66

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.

Whether this be so or not, there is no real cause for gloom in the later years of life. There are ample compensations to be found in them for every ill they bring.

Sunny hours in every season

* Wait the innocent ;

Those who taste with love and reason

What their God has sent;

Those who neither soar too highly,
Nor too lowly fall,

Feel the sunny days of winter, after all!

Then, although our darling treasures
Vanish from the heart;

Then, although our once-loved pleasures
One by one depart;

Though the tomb looms in the distance,
And the morning pall,

There is sunshine, and no winter, after all!

We gain by seeming loss in

D. F. MACARTHY.

OLD AGE AND DEATH.

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er,
So calm are we when passions are no more;
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed
Lets in new light through chinks that time has

made;

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become.

As they draw near to their eternal home. Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new.

WALLER.

Early indications of coming age are described in