So will thy people, with thankful devotion, Praise him who saved them from peril and sword,

Shouting in chorus, from ocean to ocean, Peace to the nations, and praise to the Lord. HENRY FOTHERGILL CHORLEY.

DISARMAMENT.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, the Quaker bard of America, was born at Haverhill, Mass., Dec. 17, 1807, and after spending his boyhood on a farm, began to write verses for publication. Soon he became editor, and has conducted several journals. He was prominent among the antislavery reformers of New England. His poems are among the greatest favorites of the American people, and are admired wherever the English language is used.

"PUT up the sword!" the voice of Christ

once more

Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers,

sons

Of desolate women in their far-off homes, Waiting to hear the step that never comes! O men and brothers! let that voice be heard. War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

Fear not the end. There is a story told In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,

And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
With grave responses listening unto it:
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy and benevolent,
Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look,
Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook.
"O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate
The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace
Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate."
Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,

pity said, "Poor fiend, even thee I love." Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank

Into the form and fashion of a dove; And where the thunder of its rage was heard, Circling above him sweetly sang the bird: "Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song, "And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

ALL-HALLOWS; OR, THE MONK'S DREAM.

A PROPHECY.

I TROD once more that place of tombs: Death-rooted elder, full in flower, Oppressed me with its sad perfumes,

Pathetic breath of arch and tower: The ivy on the cloister wall

Waved, gusty with a silver gleam : The moon sank low: the billow's fall

In moulds of music shaped my dream.

In sleep a funeral chant I heard,

A "De Profundis " far below; On the long grass the rain-drops stirred As when the distant tempests blow: Then slowly, like a heaving sea,

The graves were troubled all around; And two by two, and three by three,

The monks ascended from the ground.

From sin absolved, redeemed from tears,
There stood they, beautiful and calm,
The brethren of a thousand years,

With lifted brows and palm to palm!
On heaven they gazed in holy trance;

Low streamed their beards and tresses hoar: And each transfigured countenance

The benedictine impress bore.

By angels borne the holy rood

Encircled thrice the churchyard bound; They paced behind it, paced in blood,

With bleeding feet, but foreheads crowned; And thrice they breathed that hymn benign, Which angels sang when Christ was born; And thrice I wept, ere tower or shrine

Had caught the first white beam of morn.

Down on the earth my brows I laid ;

In these, his saints, I worshipped God: And then returned that grief which made

My heart since youth a frozen clod: "O ye," I wept, "whose woes are past,

Look round on all these prostrate stones! To these can life return at last?

Can spirit lift once more these bones?"

The smile of him the end who knows

Went, luminous, o'er them, as I spake ; Their white locks shone like mountain snows

O'er which the orient mornings break: They stood: they pointed to the west:

And lo! where darkness late had lain

Rose many a kingdom's citied crest Reflected in a kindling main!

"Not only these, the fanes o'erthrown,

Shall rise," they said, "but myriads more; The seed, far hence by tempests blown,

Still sleeps on yon expectant shore. Send forth, sad Isle, thy reaper bands! Assert and pass thine old renown: Not here alone in farthest lands

For thee thy sons shall weave the crown."

They spake and like a cloud down sank
The just and filial grief of years;
And I that peace celestial drank

Which shines but o'er the seas of tears. Thy mission flashed before me plain,

O thou by many woes annealed! And I discerned how axe and chain Had thy great destinies signed and sealed! That seed which grows must seem to die:

In thee, when earthly hope was none,
The heaven-born hope of days gone by,

By martyrdom matured, lived on;
Concealed, like limbs of royal mould
In some Egyptian pyramid,
Or statued shape mid cities old

Beneath Vesuvian ashes hid.

For this cause by a power divine

Each temporal aid was frustrated: Tyrone, Tirconnell, Geraldine,—

In vain they fought, in vain they bled: Successive 'neath the usurping hand

Sank ill-starred Mary, erring James : Nor Spain nor France might wield the rand Which, for her own, Religion claims!

Arise, long stricken! mightier far

Are they who fight for God and thee Than those that head the adverse war!

Sad prophet! lift thy face and see! Behold, with eyes no longer wronged

By mists the sense exterior breeds, The hills of heaven around thee thronged With fiery chariots and with steeds.

The years baptized in blood are thine;

The exile's prayer from many a strand; The woes of those this hour who pine

Poor aliens in their native land; Angels and saints from heaven down-bent Watch thy long conflict without pause; And the most holy sacrament

From all thine altars pleads thy cause.

O great through suffering, rise at last

Through kindred action tenfold great! Thy future calls on thee thy past (Its soul survives) to consummate.

LEONARD BACON, one of the most prominent ministers of the Congregational Church in America, and a frequent contributor to the press, was born at Detroit, Mich., in 1802. Since 1825 he has been pastor of the Centre Church, New Haven, Conn., and is now Professor in the Divinity School of Yale College. He was one of the founders of the New York Independent, and on its original staff of editors. The following lines form the basis of the hymn beginning, "O God. beneath thy guiding hand." They were altered by the author in 1844, when he was one of a committee appointed by the General Association of Connecticut to make a collection of psalms and hymns for public worship.

THE Sabbath morn was bright and calm Upon the hills, the woods, the sea, When here the prayer and choral psalm First rose, our fathers' God, to thee.

Thou heardst, well pleased, the song, the

prayer:

Thy blessing came; and still its power
Goes onward through all time to bear
The memory of that holy hour.

What change! Through pathless woods no

more

The fierce and naked savage roams; Sweet praise along the cultured shore Breaks from a thousand happy homes.