Samuel Willoughby Duffield.

1843-1887.

IN GOOD TIME.

No flower will come to splendor,
No sunny light grow tender,
No life its harvest render,
Till God's good time.

No holy morn shall brighten,
No foes shall cease to frighten,
No heavy heart shall lighten,
Till God's good time.

I have my song and sing it,
I have my sheaf and bring it,
My life has hope to wing it,
Till God's good time.

Unknown.

THROUGH DEATH TO LIFE.

JOHN xii., 24.

Have you heard the tale of the Aloe plant,
Away in the sunny clime?

By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time;

And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers:
This floral queen, in its blooming seen,
Is the pride of the tropical bowers.
But the plant to the flower is a sacrifice,
For it blooms but once, and in blooming it dies.

Have you further heard of this Aloe plant,

That grows in the sunny clime;

How every one of its thousand flowers,
As they drop in the blooming time,
Is an infant plant that fastens its roots

In the place where it falls on the ground;
And as fast as they drop from the dying stem,
Grow lively and lovely around?

By dying it liveth a thousand-fold

In the young that spring from the death of the old.

Have you heard the tale of the Pelican,

The Arab's Gimel el Bahr;

That lives in the African solitudes,

Where the birds that live lonely are?
Have you heard how it loves its tender young,
And cares and toils for their good?

It brings them water from mountains afar,
And fishes the seas for their food.

In famine it feeds them-what love can devise !—
The blood of its bosom, and feeding them, dies.

Have

you heard the tale they tell of the Swan, The snow-white bird of the lake?

It noiselessly floats on the silvery wave,

It silently sits in the brake;

For it saves its song till the end of life,
And then, in the soft, still even,

'Mid the golden light of the setting sun,
It sings as it soars into Heaven!

And the blessed notes fall back from the skies; 'T is its only song, for in singing, it dies.

You have heard these tales; shall I tell you one, A greater and better than all?

Have you heard of Him whom the heavens adore,
Before whom the hosts of them fall?

How He left the choirs and anthems above,
For earth in its wailings and woes;
To suffer the shame and pain of the Cross,
And die for the life of His foes?

O Prince of the noble ! O Sufferer Divine !
What sorrow and sacrifice equal to Thine?

Have you heard this tale-the best of them all— The tale of the holy and true?

He dies, but His life, in untold souls,

Lives on in the world anew;

His seed prevails, and is filling the earth,
As the stars fill the sky above;

He taught us to yield up the love of life
For the sake of the life of love;

His death is our life, His loss is our gain;
The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.

Now hear these tales, ye weary and worn,
Who for others give up your all;

Our Saviour hath told you, he that would grow
Unto earth's dark bosom must fall ;

Must pass from the view and die away,

And then will the fruit appear.

The grain that seems lost in the earth below,
Will return many fold in the ear.

By death comes life, by loss comes gain;
The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.

John Boyle O'Reilly.

1844-1890.

UNSPOKEN WORDS.

The kindly words that rise within the heart,
And thrill it with their sympathetic tone,
But die ere spoken, fail to play their part,
And claim a merit that is not their own.
The kindly word unspoken is a sin,—

A sin that wraps itself in purest guise,

And tells the heart that, doubting, looks within, That not in speech, but thought, the virtue lies.

But 't is not so; another heart may thirst
For that kind word, as Hagar in the wild-
Poor banished Hagar!-prayed a well might
burst

From out the sand to save her parching child. And loving eyes that cannot see the mind

Will watch the expected movement of the lip; Ah! can ye let its cutting silence wind

Around that heart, and scathe it like a whip?

Unspoken words, like treasures in the mine,

Are valueless until we give them birth : Like unfound gold their hidden beauties shine, Which God has made to bless and gild the earth.

How sad 't would be to see a master's hand

Strike glorious notes upon a voiceless lute! But oh! what pain when, at God's own command, A heart-string thrills with kindness, but is mute!

Then hide it not, the music of the soul,

Dear sympathy, expressed with kindly voice, But let it like a shining river roll

To deserts dry,-to hearts that would rejoice. Oh! let the symphony of kindly words

Sound for the poor, the friendless, and the weak;

And He will bless you,-He who struck these chords

Will strike another when in turn you seek.