VI.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her old 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.

VII.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy 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.

VIII.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
The 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, H. unted 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 or 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 provoke The years to br ng 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!

IX.

Oh joy that in our embers

Is something that doth like, 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 songs 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,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor.
Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joycus 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 the play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bght 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
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills and Groves, Forbode not any severing of our loves?

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquish'd one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks, which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they: The innocent brightness of a new born day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do make a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

THE SABBATH.

HENRY KIRK WHITE.

How still the morning of the hallowed day!
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hushed
The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yester morn bloomed waving in the breeze.
Sounds the most faint attract the ear-the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant beating midway up the hill.
Calmness seems thronged on yon unmoving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the fulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village
broods:

The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man,
Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And, as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls,
His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys.
Hail, Sabbath! Thee I hail, the poor man's day.
On other days, the man of toil is doomed
To eat his joyless bread, lonely, the ground
Both seat and board, screened from the winter's cold
And summer's heat by neighboring hedge or tree;

But on this day, embosomed in his home,
He shares a frugal 'meal with those he loves;
With those he loves he shares the heartfelt joy
Of giving thanks to God-not thanks of forin,
A word and a grimace, but reverently,
With covered face and upward earnest eye,
Hail, Sabbath! Thee I hail, the poor man's day:
The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe
The morning air, pure from the city's smoke;
While wandering slowly up the river side,
He meditates on Him whose power he marks
In each green tree that proudly spreads the bough,
As in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom
Around the roots, and while he thus surveys
With elevated joy each rural charm,

He hopes-yet fears presumption in the hope--
To reach those realms where Sabbath never ends.
But now his steps a welcome sound recalls:
Solemn the knell, from yonder ancient pile,
Fills all the air, inspiring joyful awe;
Slowly the throng moves o'er the tomb-paved ground;
The aged man, the bowed down, the blind,
Led by the thoughtless boy, and he who breathes
With pain, and eyes the new-made grave well
pleased;

These, mingled with the young, the gay, approach
The house of God-these, spite all their ills,
A glow of gladness feel; with silent praise
They enter in; a placid stillness reigns,
Until the man of God, worthy the name,
Opens the book, and reverentially
The stated portion reads. A pause ensues.
The organ breathes its distinct thunder-notes,
Then swells into a diapason full;

The people rising sing, "with harp, with harp,
And voice of psalms;” harmoniously attuned
The various voices blend; the long-drawn aisles,
At every close, the lingering strain prolong.

Nor yet less pleasing at the heavenly throne,
The Sabbath service of the shepherd-boy!
In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled
To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill,
Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry,
Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son;
Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold,
And wonders why he weeps: the volume closed,
With thyme-sprig laid between the leaves, he sings
The sacred lays, his weekly lesson conned
With meikle care beneath the lowly roof,
Where humble lore is learnt, where humble worth
Pines unrewarded by a thankless state.
Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen,
The shepherd-boy the Sabbath holy keeps,
Till on the heights he marks the straggling bands
Returning homeward from the house of prayer.
In peace they home resort. Oh, blissful days!
When all men worship God as conscience wills.
Far other times our fathers' grandsires knew,
A virtuous race to godliness devote.

GOLDEN THOUGHTS.

WHICH FURNISH A THEME for reflecTION, AND A TEXT FOR MENTAL DISCOURSE.

Adversity:

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

-Shakespeare.

Adversity is a trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.-Fielding.

"See a sight worthy of God:"-a good man struggling with adversity, and superior to it.-John Wesley.

Anxiety:

Anxiety is the poison of life, the parent of many sins, and of more miseries. Why then allow it when we know that all the future is guided by a Father's hand?-Blair.

Ambition:

Ambition is a spirit in the world

That causes all the ebbs and flows of nations, Keeps mankind sweet by action; without that The world would be a filthy, settled mud.-Crown. Ambition, ruled by reason and religion, is a virtue; unchecked and maddened by vanity and covetousness, it is a vice. Without ambition, no great deed was ever accomplished. It is a guiding star to the wise and good; only a snare to the vain and foolish. Ambition is the strongest incentive to perseverance, and difficulties will sink before it, where they had appeared mountain high. It is ambition which keeps alive hope and courage. Without it man would be content to be a poor, debased creature, allowing the powers of his brain to rest for want of energy to cultivate and apply them. He could never rise in his profession, having no ambition to reach its highest point. Ambition appears to me the pure, honest desire to excel in whatever we undertake, provided, always, that we do not suffer our selfish desire to rise, to lead us into doing wrong to our fellow men or violating the commands of God. Like every other good gift, it is the abuse and not the use of ambition's fire that leads to sin. Kept within the proper bounds, and it is a noble quality, leading to perfection.-Sterne.

Anger:

Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man. It affects nothing it sets about, and hurts the man who is possessed by it more than the other against whom it is directed.-Stultz.

To be angry about trifles is low and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils.-Barrow.

There is many a man whose tongue might govern multitudes if he could govern his tongue.-Anon.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.-George Eliot.

Affability: Affability is a real ornament-the most beautiful dress that man or woman can wear, and worth far more as a means of winning favor than the finest clothes and jewels ever were. It is incumbent on us as members of society to cultivate a spirit of affability, to strive to make all within our influence happy by our kind solicitude for their welfare.-Stultz. Affliction:

As some herbs need to be crushed to give forth their sweetest odors, so some natures need to be tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Grief is a common bond that unites hearts. It can knit hearts closer than happiness can, and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. The visitations of sorrow are universal. There beats not a heart that has not felt the force of affliction. There is not an eye but has witnessed many scenes of sorrow.-Bulwer.

Why not accept all your misfortune as the discipline of a paternal hand, in love prescribed, to lead you to your place, and whiten you for Christian service.-J. G. Holland.

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

Art:

-Longfellow.

Yet we have said all our fine things about the arts, we must confess that the arts, as we know them, are but initial. Our best praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not to the actual result. * * * Art has not come to its maturity if it do not put itself abreast with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. There is a higher work for art than the arts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tired hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end. A man should find in it an outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he can do that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists.-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Avarice:

Avarice is an uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another; but to the favor of the covetous there is a ready way; bring money and nothing is denied.—Samuel Johnson.