We see the mystery of sin,

We know the mystery of pain,

We feel too weak the crown to win,
And fear we bear the cross in vain.

Sadness and cynicism breathe

Their blight upon this age of ours, And pitying smile at those who wreathe The altar of their faith with flowers.

"These be thy gods, O Israel, these!" Cries scornful Pity; wax they wroth Unless their vanity ye please

With candle and with altar-cloth!

Fools that ye are! and blind as weak!
The God of truth is mightier far
Than this poor tinselled thing ye seek-
His temple-light is sun and star!"

We call to Him with prayerful cries!
We listening wait-with bated breath!
No answer cometh from the skies,

And earth but dumbly shows us death!

The age of miracles is past,

Swift answer unto prayer would be

A sudden miracle-as vast

As those of Him of Galilee !

All men, all things, bow down to fate;
The demi-gods who ruled the spheres
Were conquered by it, soon or late

Trod down by iron-footed years.

B

In life's full moon its shadows lie,
Beneath our feet-where'er we gaze
We see far-spread a summer sky,
And life lit up with happy rays.

In youth we walk towards the sun,
And all our shadow backward sweeps-
But when life's race is nearly run,
Qur lengthening shadow forward creeps

And dims the slanting sunset light
As, stumbling on, we darkly tread,
Till all the silent gloom of night
Eternal closes overhead!-

The great repose which hallows death,
When first it seals life's tirèd eyes
And closes fast the lips, whose breath
Hath ebbed from sighing into sighs!

Man-even fiends-appalled would shrink
From contemplating endless pain!
And darest thou, O mortal! think
Just God could gloat o'er endless pain?

Eternal torment is a lie,

As wild and wicked as the dream Of some mad monster, who should try How worst of worst he could blaspheme.

God is as mightier than man

As mightiest is to meanest, so

His mercy must be tenderer than

The tenderest mercy mortals know.

If otherwise, then man were greater
In goodness than the Lord of all!
The creature, than his great Creator!
And God less noble than His thrall !

Nature knows neither worst nor best-
No "stepson" weed, no "favourite" flower,
Both equal nourished at her breast,

And equal fed, with sun and shower!

So Nature's equal gifts were given

To man-no "favouritism" thereAnd so, perchance, in highest Heaven

Both great and small may equal share!

Our life goes on through light and shade,
Through storm and calm, through gloom and shine,
Our soul unknowing why 'twas made,

Yet hopeful dreaming-some divine

And stronger purpose than this earth,
With all its experience, learns

Was blent within us at our birth-
That some dim spark of Godhead burns

For ever, like a vestal fire,

Within our inmost being's cell, Which rises from our funeral pyre

To loftier worlds-" where all is well ".

And with its tried experience guides
Our larger life-in loftier spheres,
Amidst celestial sweeping tides,

Which bear the burthen of the years,

Of time and fate, with widening course,
'Midst stars serener-Seraph-trod,
Until they reach their parent source,
And give His gifts back, unto God!
Like furnace-fired, ice-tempered ore,

Bent, hot, not broke, with blows of ill,
But stronger-tempered more and more,
By pain and toil, to work His will!
Eternal life! Eternal change

Of happy work with happy rest!
Where "work is worship" through all range
Of ages, growing each more blest!

MRS. W. J. ANDERSON.

(Emma Frances Baker.)

Born 1842-Died 1868.

[Youngest daughter of the late Rev. C. K. Baker of Hillside, Morphett Vale, South Australia, brought to the colony a year after her birth. Many of the poems appeared in Australian periodicals under the name of "Frances." In 1864 she married Mr. Anderson of the Mauritian Civil Service, and left the colony with sad forebodings (which were fulfilled) that she would never again behold the home of her childhood. Her departure was marked by a touching poem entitled "An Australian Girl's Farewell." She died at Souillac, in the island of Mauritius, on 12th April 1868, at the early age of twenty-five. Her works have been collected into a volume entitled Colonial Poems, privately published by Marlborough & Co., London.]

THE SONG OF A LIFE.

I DREAMT of a song, a sad, sad song;
It stole through my sleep.

With tones so deep

That the echoes loved it and kept it long,

Repeating again

The soft low strain,

Till I woke and remembered its gentle pain;

And all day long

It haunts my brain,

This Song.

The moon is above the hill, mother;
A ray of its gentle light

Has silently come, like a blessing,
To comfort the earth this night.

But my heart seems like a valley
Where the moonbeams never play,
All sad with the gay world round it,
All dark in the midst of day.
Yes, the earth may be full of gladness,
But what is its joy to me?-

The brighter the sun shines out, mother,
The darker the shades will be;
And I'm walking now in the shadows
By the very brightness cast.

I've been looking far in the future,

To see whether joy will last,
And I find it is ever fading
As the weary years go by.

I fear I shall live to feel, mother,

Life but a long-drawn sigh,

When the arms that clasp me now, mother,

And the hearts I call my own

Leave me, poor me! in the world, mother,
In the wide, wide world alone;

When my heart, like a field in summer,
Is burnt with the world's hot breath,
And the flowers that bloomed in the spring-time
Have drooped 'neath its touch of death.