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Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom, mingle its perfume
With that of flowers, which never bloomed on
earth.

With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and acre of our God,

This is the place, where human harvests grow! HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Gently the Parting Spirit fled.

DEAR

EAR as thou wert, and justly dear,
We will not weep for thee

;

One thought shall check the starting tear,

It is that thou art free.

And thus shall Faith's consoling power
The tears of love restrain;

Oh! who that saw thy parting hour,
Could wish thee here again?

Triumphant in thy closing eye
The hope of glory shone,

Joy breathed in thine expiring sigh,
To think the fight was won.

Gently the passing spirit fled,

Sustained by grace

Oh! may

divine:

such grace on me be shed,

And make my end like thine!

DALE.

FIRST

Golden Precepts.

IRST worship God;-he that forgets to pray Bids not himself good-morrow, nor good-day; Let thy first labour be to purge thy sin,

And serve him first, whence all things did begin.

Honour thy parents to prolong thine end;
With them, though for a truth, do not contend;
Whoever makes his father's heart to bleed
Shall have a child that will avenge the deed.
Think that is just; 'tis not enough to do,
Unless thy very thoughts are upright too.
Defend the truth; for that, who will not die,
A coward is, and gives himself the lie.

Honour the king, as sons their parents do,
For he's thy father, and thy country's too.

Take well whate'er shall chance, though bad it be,
Take it for good, and 'twill be good to thee.

Swear not; an oath is like a dangerous dart
Which, shot, rebounds to strike the shooter's heart.

Fly drunkenness, whose vile incontinence
Takes both away thy reason and thy sense,
Till with Circæan cups thy mind possest
Leaves to be man, and wholly turns to beast:
Think, while thou swallowest the capacious bowl,
Thou let'st in seas, to wreck and drown thy soul;
That hell is open, to remembrance call,
And think how subject drunkards are to fall.

To doubtful matters do not headlong run,
What's well left off were better not begun.

First think; and if thy thoughts approve thy will,
Then speak, and, after, that thou speak'st fulfil.

So live with men, as if God's curious eye
Did everywhere into thine actions pry;
For never yet was sin so void of sense,
So fully faced with brazen impudence,
As that it durst, before men's eyes commit
Their brutal lusts, lest they should witness it;
How dare they then offend, when God shall see,
That must alone both judge and jury be?

Take thou no care how to defer thy death,
And give more respite to this mortal breath.
Would'st thou live long? the only means are
these,

'Bove Galen's diet or Hippocrates':

Strive to live well; tread in the upright ways,
And rather count thy actions than thy days:
Then thou hast liv'd enough amongst us here,
For every day well spent I count a year.
Live well, and then how soon soe'er thou die
Thou art of age to claim eternity.

But he that outlives Nestor, and appears

To have pass'd the date of gray Methusalem's years,

If he his life to sloth and sin doth give,

I say he only was, he did not live.

THOMAS RANDOLPII.

Goodness and Truth require no
Decoration.

GOODNESS and truth require no decoration;
They, in and through themselves, are great

and fair:

All ornament is supererogation,

Giving false coloring and fictitious air.

Beauty is virtue's image, truth's best light,-
Virtue and truth its representatives:

'Tis the grand girdle, that, with radiance bright, To both,-in all that are, their lustre gives.

To its sublime control all evil bows,

Or sneaks away, subjected to its reign; O'er each defect a garb of mystery throws, Or seeks her midnight nakedness again. Error must be the lot of mortal kind,

But virtue, in life's night, man's guide may be ; For man's dim eye, so weak,-'tis almost blind,— Scarce looks through mist-damps of mortality. Vain is endeavour!-true; but that endeavour, It goodness, truth, and virtue testifies; Struggles and fails, but fails through weakness

ever,

Yet, failing, pours out light on darkened eyes.

Ye vainly dream, obscurers of the earth,

That all is tending downwards to its fall; Vain are your scoffs on manhood, and man'sworth, And that great tendency which governs all.

In vain, with fading and offensive flowers,
Ye hide the chains of mental tyranny:
The unhealthy spirit, lured to treacherous bowers,
May joy in its free-chosen slavery;

Call what is incomplete, degenerate;

God's children, bastards; and its curses
throw

At all who bend not at its temple-gate,
Nor to night's image kneel in worship low.
We see in the unfinished, tottering, frail,

A slowly, surely, sweetly working leaven,
And in the childish dreams of life's low vale,
The faint, but lovely, shadowings-forth of
heaven.

We sink not, sacred ones! but fluttering tend,— Though weak, we tend towards God: the word we hear,

Audibly bidding us uprise, and wend

Our way

above man's feebleness and fear.

An idle toil is slumbering man's poor fate,
And duty neither lovely looks, nor true;
God's mandate seems despotic,-desolate
His doings, and his voice terrific too.

Yet duty is but deeds of loveliness,

And truth is power to make the prisoner free; And him, whose self-forged chains his spirit

press,

No effort shall arouse from slavery.

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