Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn. Thou first and chief, sole Sovereign of the Vale! Oh struggling with the darkness all night long, And all night visited by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink; Companion of the Morning Star at dawn, Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Coherald wake, Oh wake, and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth! Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee Parent of perpetual streams!
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, Forever shattered, and the same forever? Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow, Adown enormous ravines slope amain- Torrents, methinks, that head a mighty Voice, And stopped at once, amidst their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full Moon! Who bade the Sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements ! Utter forth GOD! and fill the hills with praise!
Thou, too, hoar Mount, with thy sky pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet, the Avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depths of clouds, that veil thy breast, Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou, That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud, To rise before me,-Rise, Oh ever rise! Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth! Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread Ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD!
WHERE'ER thy wildered crowd of brethren jostles,
Where'er there lingers but a shade of wrong, There still is need of martyrs and apostles,
There still is need of never dying song.
Co the Memory of Daniel Wheeler.
And worthy of our love! No more Thy aged form shall rise before
The hushed and waiting worshipper, In meek obedience, utterance giving To words of truth, so fresh and living That ever to the inward sense They bore unquestioned evidence Of an anointed messenger!— Or, bowing down thy silver hair In reverent awfulness of prayer,
The world-its times and sense-shut out, The brightness of Faith's holy trance Gathered upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt- The cold dark shadows floating here, In Time's unluminous atmosphere Were parted by an angel's hand, And through them on thy spiritual eye Shone down the blessedness on high— The glory of the better land.
We mourn for thee:
Yet, full of hope and strong in faith
That, through the ministry of death,
From weary works our blessed Lord
Hath called thee to the rich reward,
Of those who in His holy name
Have borne the cross-despised the shame, And counted not their own lives dear; Knowing no other will than His-
Nor hope but of His love-nor fear
TO THE MEMORY OF DANIEL WHEELER.
Save of their own unworthiness-
No shelter save beneath the wing
Of Ancient Goodness,-and no life Save in their death to outward strife The burial of their human will- In meek submission draining still Each bitter and afflicting cup Vouchsafed to them, while filling up The remnant of His suffering.
While, meet for no good work, the vine May still its worthless branches twine. Who knoweth not that with thee fell A great man in our Israel?
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, And, in thy hand retaining yet The Pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell. Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free, Across the Neva's cold morass
The breezes from the Frozen Sea
With Winter's arrowy keenness pass, Or, where the unwarning tropic gale
Howled through thy "Freeling's" tattered sail; Or, where the noon-hour's fervid heat Against Tahiti's mountains beat ;-
The same mysterious Hand which gave Deliverance upon land and wave- Tempered for thee the storms which blew Ladoga's frozen surface o'er,
And blessed for thee the baleful dew
Of evening upon Eimeo's shore,
TO THE MEMORY OF DANIEL WHEELER.
Beneath this genial heaven of ours, Midst our soft gales and opening flowers,
Hath given thee a grave!
Who seeth not as man-whose way Is not as ours: and oh, for thee, Nor anxious doubt, nor dark dismay Disquieted thy closing day,
But evermore thy soul could say
"My Father careth still for me!"
Called from thy childhood's home-from her The last bud on thy household tree, The last dear one to minister
In duty and in love to thee,
From all that Nature holdeth dear, Weary with years and worn with pain To seek our distant shores again : Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing
The things that should befall thee here, Whether of labour or of death,
In child-like trust serenely going To that last trial of thy faith!
Where never shines our Northern star
On that dark waste which Balboa saw From Darien's mountains stretching far. So strange, Heaven-broad and lone, that there With forehead to its damp winds bare,
He bent his mailed knee in awe ;—
In many an isle whose coral feet The surges of that ocean beat, In thy palm-shadows Oahu, And Honolulu's silver bay,
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