THE WINGED WORSHIPERS. C. SPRAGUE. AY, guiltless pair, What seek ye from the fields of heaven! Ye have no need of prayer, Ye have no sins to be forgiven. Why perch ye here, The God ye never could offend? Ye never knew The crimes for which we come to weep: To you 'tis given To wake sweet nature's untaught lays; To chirp away a life of praise. Then spread each wing, Far, far above, o'er lakes and lands, In yon blue dome not reared with hands. Or, if ye stay, To note the consecrated hour, And let me try your envied power. Above the crowd, On upward wings could I but fly, I'd bathe in yon bright cloud, the sky. And seek the stars that gem 'Twere heaven indeed, Through fields of trackless light to soar, On nature's charms to feed, And nature's own great God adore. THE ISLE OF THE LONG AGO. BENJ. F. TAYLOR. [By permission of S. C. Griggs & Co.] How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow, And the summers like buds between, And the year in the sheaf, so they come and they go, On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow, As it glides in the shadow and sheen. There's a magical Isle up the river Time, And the Junes with the roses are straying. And the name of that Isle is the Long Ago, And we bury our treasures there; There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow; There are fragments of song that nobody sings, And a part of an infant's prayer; There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings; There are broken vows and pieces of rings, And the garments that she used to wear. There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the Mirage is lifted in air, And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river is fair. O remember'd for aye, be the blessed Isle, THERE COMES A TIME. There comes a time, or soon or late, To bear reproof from spirits broken, Oh! were the wealth of worlds our own, We freely would the treasures yield, eyes that here their last have shone, If lips in endless silence sealed, If One look of love o'er us might cast, When anger arms the thoughtless tongue, In what remorse thy wrath may end; |