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Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and | Despised with Jesus, sorrowful and lonely,

through sinning,

He shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed : Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.

FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.

THE CHRISTIAN CALLING.

Yet calmly looking upward in its strife.

In meek obedience to the heavenly Teacher, Thy weary soul can find its only peace; Seeking no aid from any human creature, Looking to God alone for his release.

And he will come in his own time and power
To set his earnest-hearted children free :
Watch only through this dark and painful hour,

THY night is dark; behold, the shade was deeper And the bright morning yet will break for thee.

In the old garden of Gethsemane,

When that calm voice awoke the weary sleeper: "Couldst thou not watch one hour alone with me?"

O thou, so weary of thy self-denials!
And so impatient of thy little cross,
Is it so hard to bear thy daily trials,

To count all earthly things a gainful loss?

What if thou always suffer tribulation,
And if thy Christian warfare never cease;
The gaining of the quiet habitation
Shall gather thee to everlasting peace.

But here we all must suffer, walking lonely
The path that Jesus once himself hath gone :
Watch thou in patience through the dark hour
only,

This one dark hour, before the eternal dawn.

The captive's oar may pause upon the galley,
The soldier sleep beneath his plumèd crest,
And Peace may fold her wing o'er hill and valley,
But thou, O Christian! must not take thy rest.

Thou must walk on, however man upbraid thee,
With Him who trod the wine-press all alone;
Thou wilt not find one human hand to aid thee,
One human soul to comprehend thine own.

Heed not the images forever thronging
From out the foregone life thou liv'st no more ;
Faint-hearted mariner! still art thou longing
For the dim line of the receding shore.

Canst thou forget thy Christian supersciption,
“Behold, we count them happy which endure"?
What treasure wouldst thou, in the land Egyptian,
Repass the stormy water to secure?

Poor, wandering soul! I know that thou art seeking
Some easier way, as all have sought before,
To silence the reproachful inward speaking,
Some landward path unto an island shore.

O, that thy faithless soul, one great hour only, Would comprehend the Christian's perfect life;

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او

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart & gather to the

In looking

And thinking

eyes

on the happy Autumn fields, on the

days

that are no more.

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They

turned to the Earth, but she frowns

on her child;

They turned to the Sea, and he smiled as of old : Sweeten was the peril of the breakers white and wild, Sweeter Than the land, with its bondage and gold!

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POEMS OF NATURE.

WORLDLINESS.

THE World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and, in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I
still

A lover of the meadows, and the woods,
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH..

NATURE.

THE bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,
Because my feet find measure with its call;
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,
For I am known to them, both great and small.
The flower that on the lonely hillside grows
Expects me there when spring its bloom has given;
And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows
And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven;
For he who with his Maker walks aright,
Shall be their lord as Adam was before;
His ear shall catch each sound with new delight,
Each object wear the dress that then it wore;
And he, as when erect in soul he stood,
Hear from his Father's lips that all is good.

TINTERN ABBEY.

JONES VERY.

I HAVE learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power

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When we perceive the light that breaks through | Press to one center still, the general good.
the visible symbol,
See dying vegetables life sustain,

What exultation is ours! We the discovery See life dissolving vegetate again :

have made, All forms that perish other forms supply Yet is the meaning the same as when Adam lived (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die); sinless in Eden, Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, Only long hidden it slept, and now again is They rise, they break, and to that sea return. revealed. Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole; Man unconsciously uses figures of speech every One all-extending, all-preserving Soul moment, Connects each being, greatest with the least; Little dreaming the cause why to such terms Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast; he is prone, All served, all serving; nothing stands alone; Little dreaming that everything here has its own The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

correspondence

Folded within its form, as in the body the soul. Gleams of the mystery fall on us still, though much is forgotten,

Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spreads the flowery lawn.

And through our commonest speech illumine Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
the path of our thoughts.

Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. Thus doth the lordly sun shine forth a type of Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat? God-head; Loves of his own and raptures swell the note. Wisdom and love the beams that stream on a The bounding steed you pompously bestride darkened world. Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.

Thus do the sparkling waters flow, giving joy to Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain? the desert, The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. And the fountain of life opens itself to the Thine the full harvest of the golden year? thirst. Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer : Thus doth the word of God distill like the rain The hog that plows not, nor obeys thy call, and the dew-drops ; Lives on the labors of this lord of all.

Thus doth the warm wind breathe like to the spirit of God;

Know, Nature's children all divide her care ; The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.

And the green grass and the flowers are signs of While man exclaims, "See all things for my use!"

the regeneration.

O thou Spirit of Truth, visit our minds once

more;

Give us to read in letters of light the language celestial,

Written all over the earth, written all over the the sky,

Thus may we bring our hearts once more to know our Creator,

Seeing in all things around, types of the Infi

nite Mind.

CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH.

NATURE'S CHAIN.

FROM "THE ESSAY ON MAN.”

"See man for mine!" replies a pampered goose:
And just as short of reason he must fall
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

Grant that the powerful still the weak control;
Nature that tyrant checks; he only knows,
Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole :
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?
Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods ;
For some his interest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride :
All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy
The extensive blessing of his luxury.
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves ;

Look round our world; behold the chain of love Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,

Combining all below and all above,

See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace.
See matter next, with various life endued,

And, till he ends the being, makes it blest;
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favored man by touch ethereal slain.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish when thy feast is o'er !

ALEXANDER POPE.

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