While, at the sunset time,
Swells the cathedral's chime,
Yet, in thy dreaming,
While to thy spirit's eye
Yet the vast mountains lie
Piled in the Switzer's sky,
Icy and gleaming:

Prompter of silent prayer,
Be the wild picture there

In the mind's chamber,
And, through each coming day
Him who, as staff and stay,
Watched o'er thy wandering way,
Freshly remember.

So, when the call shall be
Soon or late unto thee,

As to all given,

Still may that picture live,
All its fair forms survive,
And to thy spirit give

Gladness in Heaven!

THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE.

A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN.

To weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God's meekest Angel gently comes:
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again;
And yet in tenderest love, our dear
And Heavenly Father sends him here.

There's quiet in that Angel's glance,
There's rest in his still countenance !
He mocks no grief with idle cheer,
Nor wounds with words the mourner's
ear;

But ills and woes he may not cure
He kindly trains us to endure.

Angel of Patience! sent to calm
Our feverish brows with cooling palm;
To lay the storms of hope and fear,
And reconcile life's smile and tear;
The throbs of wounded pride to still,
And make our own our Father's will!
O thou who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day;

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He walks with thee, that Angel kind, And gently whispers, "Be resigned: Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell The dear Lord ordereth all things well ! ”

FOLLEN.

ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FUTURE STATE."

FRIEND of my soul!-as with moist eye

I look up from this page of thine, Is it a dream that thou art nigh, Thy mild face gazing into mine?

That presence seems before me now, A placid heaven of sweet moonrise, When, dew-like, on the earth below Descends the quiet of the skies.

The calm brow through the parted hair,

The gentle lips which knew no guile, Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care With the bland beauty of their smile.

Ah me! - at times that last dread scene Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea, Will cast its shade of doubt between The failing eyes of Faith and thee.

Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page, Where through the twilight air of earth,

Alike enthusiast and sage,

Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth;

Lifting the Future's solemn veil;
The reaching of a mortal hand
To put aside the cold and pale
Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land;

In thoughts which answer to my own, In words which reach my inward ear, Like whispers from the void Unknown, I feel thy living presence here.

The waves which lull thy body's rest,

The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod, Unwasted, through each change, attest The fixed economy of God.

Shall these poor elements outlive

The mind whose kingly will they wrought?

Their gross unconsciousness survive
Thy godlike energy of thought?

THOU LIVEST, FOLLEN! - not in vain
Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne
The burthen of Life's cross of pain,
And the thorned crown of suffering

worn.

O, while Life's solemn mystery gloom's Around us like a dungeon's wall, Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs, Silent the heaven which bends o'er all!

While day by day our loved ones glide In spectral silence, hushed and lone, To the cold shadows which divide

The living from the dread Unknown;

While even on the closing eye,

And on the lip which moves in vain, The seals of that stern mystery

Their undiscovered trust retain ;

And only midst the gloom of death, Its mournful doubts and haunting fears,

Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, Smile dimly on us through their tears;

'Tis something to a heart like mine To think of thee as living yet; To feel that such a light as thine

Could not in utter darkness set.

Less dreary seems the untried way Since thou hast left thy footprints there,

And beams of mournful beauty play
Round the sad Angel's sable hair.

Oh!-at this hour when half the sky Is glorious with its evening light, And fair broad fields of summer lie

Hung o'er with greenness in my sight;

While through these elm-boughs wet with rain

The sunset's golden walls are seen,

With clover-bloom and yellow grain And wood-draped hill and stream between ;

I long to know if scenes like this
Are hidden from an angel's eyes;
If earth's familiar loveliness

Haunts not thy heaven's serenerskies.

For sweetly here upon thee grew
The lesson which that beauty gave,
The ideal of the Pure and True

In earth and sky and gliding wave.

And it may be that all which lends
The soul an upward impulse here,
With a diviner beauty blends,

And greets us in a holier sphere.

Through groves where blighting never fell

The humbler flowers of earth may twine;

And simple draughts from childhood's well

Blend with the angel-tasted wine.

Go, let your bloated Church rehearse
The lesson it has learned so well;
It moves not with its prayer or curse
The gates of heaven or hell.

Let the State scaffold rise again, —
Did Freedom die when Russell died?
Forget ye how the blood of Vane

From earth's green bosom cried?

The great hearts of your olden time Are beating with you, full and strong All holy memories and sublime

And glorious round ye throng.

The bluff, bold men of Runnymede

Are with ye still in times like these; The shades of England's mighty dead, Your cloud of witnesses!

The truths ye urge are borne abroad
By every wind and every tide;
The voice of Nature and of God
Speaks out upon your side.

The weapons which your hands have found

Are those which Heaven itself has wrought, Light, Truth, and Love ;- your battleground The free, broad field of Thought.

No partial, selfish purpose breaks
The simple beauty of your plan,
Nor lie from throne or altar shakes
Your steady faith in man.

The languid pulse of England starts And bounds beneath your words of power,

The beating of her million hearts Is with you at this hour!

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O ye who, with undoubting eyes, Through present cloud and gathering

storm,

Behold the span of Freedom's skies, And sunshine soft and warm, —

Press bravely onward! - not in vain Your generous trust in human-kind; The good which bloodshed could not gain

Your peaceful zeal shall find.

Press on the triumph shall be won Of common rights and equal laws, The glorious dream of Harrington, And Sidney's good old cause.

Blessing the cotter and the crown,

Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup; And, plucking not the highest down, Lifting the lowest up.

Press on!- and we who may not share
The toil or glory of your fight
May ask, at least, in earnest prayer,
God's blessing on the right!

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME.

THE Quaker of the olden time! -
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,

He walked the dark earth through. The lust of power, the love of gain, The thousand lures of sin

Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.

With that deep insight which detects
All great things in the small,

And knows how each man's life affects
The spiritual life of all,

He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law;

The presence of the wrong or right
He rather felt than saw.

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,
That nothing stands alone,
That whoso gives the motive, makes
His brother's sin his own.
And, pausing not for doubtful choice
Of evils great or small,
He listened to that inward voice
Which called away from all.

O Spirit of that early day,

So pure and strong and true,
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.
Give strength the evil to forsake,
The cross of Truth to bear,
And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer!

The outworn rite, the old abuse,
The pious fraud transparent grown,
The good held captive in the use
Of wrong alone, —

These wait their doom, from that great
law
Which makes the past time serve to-
day;

And fresher life the world shall draw
From their decay.

O, backward-looking son of time!
The new is old, the old is new,
The cycle of a change sublime

Still sweeping through.

So wisely taught the Indian seer; Destroying Seva, forming Brahm, Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,

Are one, the same.

dly as thou, in that old day

Thou mournest, did thy sire repine; So, in his time, thy child grown gray Shall sigh for thine.

But life shall on and upward go;

Th' eternal step of Progress beats To that great anthem, calm and slow, Which God repeats.

Take heart! the Waster builds again,

A charmed life old Goodness hath; The tares may perish, - but the grain Is not for death.

God works in all things; all obey

His first propulsion from the night: Wake thou and watch! - the world is gray

With morning light!

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

Look on him!-through his dungeon grate

Feebly and cold, the morning light Comes stealing round him, dim and late As if it loathed the sight.

Reclining on his strawy bed,

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His hand upholds his drooping head,-
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard,
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;
And o'er his bony fingers flow
His long, dishevelled locks of snow.

No grateful fire before him glows,

And yet the winter's breath is chill;
And o'er his half-clad person goes.
The frequent ague thrill!
Silent, save ever and anon,

A sound, half murmur and half groan,
Forces apart the painful grip
Of the old sufferer's bearded lip;
O sad and crushing is the fate
Of old age chained and desolate !

Just God! why lies that old man there?
A murderer shares his prison bed,
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid
hair,

Gleam on him, fierce and red; And the rude oath and heartless jeer Fall ever on his loathing ear, And, or in wakefulness or sleep, Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb, Crimson with murder, touches him!

What has the gray - haired prisoner done?

Has murder stained his hands with

gore?

Not so; his crime's a fouler one;

GOD MADE THE OLD MAN POOR! For this he shares a felon's cell, The fittest earthly type of hell! For this, the boon for which he poured His young blood on the invader's sword, And counted light the fearful cost, His blood-gained liberty is lost!

And so, for such a place of rest,

Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as rain

On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest,
And Saratoga's plain?
Look forth, thou man of many scars,
Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars;
It must be joy, in sooth, to see
Yon monument upreared to thee,
Piled granite and a prison cell, -
The land repays thy service well!