Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The heroic of all ages,

Whose deeds crowd History's pages,
And Time's great volume make.

I live to hold communion

With all that is divine,

To feel there is a union

'Twixt Nature's heart and mine;

To profit by affliction,

Reap truth from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser from conviction,

And fulfil God's grand design.

I live to hail that season

By gifted ones foretold,

When men shall live by reason,
And not alone by gold,
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted
As Eden was of old.

I live for those who love me,

For those who know me true,

For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my spirit too;

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance,

And the good that I can do.

If he keeps the face of the Saviour forever and alway in sight,

His toil shall be sweeter than honey, his weaving is sure to be right.

And when the work is ended, and the web is turned and shown,

He shall hear the voice of the Master; it shall say to him, "Well done!"

And the white-winged angels of Heaven, to bear him thence, shall come down;

And God shall give him gold for his hire-not coin, but a glowing crown!

ANSON G. CHESTER.

G. LINNÆUS BANKS.

THE TAPESTRY-WEAVERS.

1.

LET us take to our hearts a lesson -no braver lesson can be,

From the ways of the tapestry-weavers on the other side of the sea.

Above their heads the pattern hangs, they study it

with care,-

The while their fingers deftly move, their eyes are fastened there.

They tell this curious thing, besides, of the patient, plodding weaver:

He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side ever.

It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is loosed and turned,

That he sees his real handiwork- that his marvelous skill is learned.

Ah, the sight of its delicate beauty, how it pays him for all his cost!

No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost,

KNEE DEEP.

THEY are calling "knee deep! knee deep!" to-night in the marsh below,

Down by the bank, where the rank swordgrass and calamus grow;

Like an army of silversmiths, forging bells for the northern sprites,

And, keeping time to a rhyme, they work thro' the

summer nights.

Steadily up from their swampy forge, the sparks of the fireflies rise

In the pool where the wading lilies make love

through half-shut eyes

To the whippoorwill who scolds, like a shrew, at the fluffy owl!

While the nighthawk shuffles by, like a monk in a velvet cowl,

And the bat weaves inky weft, thro' the white starbeams that peep

Down through the cypress boughs, where the frogs all sing "knee deep."

I have known a song to lead a failing elderly man like me

Back thro' the gates of the years, to the scenes that used to be,

When the world was fenced from Heaven by one rose hedge, and thro'

This bourne the blessed angels looked, and the asphodel odors blew.

So these syllables of the song, from the singers among the reeds,

Have made me to walk again, knee deep, in the clover meads,

And I see the storm king riding the summer clouds in state,

With his chariot whip of livid flame, and his thunder billingsgate;

And I watch the strong tawny tide, through the flags like a lion creep,

Where the frighted inhabitants cling to the rushes, and sing "knee deep."

Knee deep I bend in the rippled creek, with buttercup blooms o'erblown,

Like the gold on beauty's billowy breast, its color half-hid, half-shown;

Knee deep in the saffron marigold flowers, that prank the meadows fair

Like a procession of Saxon children, blue-eyed and with yellow hair;

Knee deep in the whortleberries, sunbrowned in

the sun I stand,

THE plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere

An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,

And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.
II.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,

Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

III.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul'
Of that waste place with joy

Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear

The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;

As when a mighty people rejoice

With shawms and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd
Thro' the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

RIPE WHEAT.

WE bent to-day o'er a coffined form,
And our tears fell softly down;
We looked our last on the aged face,
With its look of peace, its patient grace,
And hair like a silver crown.

We touched our own to the clay-cold hands, From life's long labor at rest;

And among the blossoms white and sweet, We noted a bunch of golden wheat, Clasped close to the silent breast.

The blossoms whispered of fadeless bloom,
Of a land where fall no tears;
The ripe wheat told of toil and care,
The patient waiting, the trusting prayer,
The garnered good of the years.

We knew not what work her hands had found, What rugged places at her feet;

What cross was hers, what blackness of night; We saw but the peace, the blossoms white, And the bunch of ripened wheat.

As each goes up from the field of earth,
Bearing the treasures of life,

God looks for some gathered grain of good,