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THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR.

His dress is woven of palmy strands, And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands,

Traced with the Prophet's wise commands!

The turban folded about his head Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid,

And the fan that cools him of palm was made.

Of threads of palm was the carpet spun Whereon he kneels when the day is done,

And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one!

To him the palm is a gift divine, Wherein all uses of man combine, House, and raiment, and food, and wine !

And, in the hour of his great release, His need of the palm shall only cease With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.

"Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm;

"Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!"

As through the open minster floats The song of breeze and bird! Not less the wonder of the sky

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That daisies bloom below; The brook sings on, though loud and high

The cloudy organs blow!

And, if the tender ear be jarred
That, haply, hears by turns
The saintly harp of Olney's bard,
The pastoral pipe of Burns,
No discord mars His perfect plan
Who gave them both a tongue;
For he who sings the love of man
The love of God hath sung!

To-day be every fault forgiven
Of him in whom we joy!

We take, with thanks, the gold of
Heaven

And leave the earth's alloy. Be ours his music as of spring, His sweetness as of flowers, The songs the bard himself might sing In holier ears than ours.

Sweet airs of love and home, the hum
Of household melodies,
Come singing, as the robins come
To sing in door-yard trees.
And, heart to heart, two nations lean,
No rival wreaths to twine,
But blending in eternal green
The holly and the pine!

LINES,

READ AT THE BOSTON CELEBRATION OF THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ROBERT BURNS, 25TH IST MO., 1859.

How sweetly come the holy psalms

From saints and martyrs down. The waving of triumphal palms

Above the thorny crown!
The choral praise, the chanted prayers
From harps by angels strung,
The hunted Cameron's mountain airs,
The hymns that Luther sung!

Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,
The sounds of earth are heard,

THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR.

Our and in the river is winding

The links of its long, red chain
Through belts of dusky pine-land
And gusty leagues of plain.

Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
With the drifting cloud-rack joins, -
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins!

Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row.

And with one foot on the water,
And one upon the shore,
The Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.

Is it the clang of wild-geese?

Is it the Indian's yell,

That lends to the voice of the northwind

The tones of a far-off bell?

The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.

The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain,
To the boatman on the river,

To the hunter on the plain!

Even so in our mortal journey

The bitter north-winds blow, And thus upon life's Red River Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.

And when the Angel of Shadow

Rests his feet on wave and shore, And our eyes grow dim with watching And our hearts faint at the oar,

Happy is he who heareth

The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace!

KENOZA LAKE.

As Adam did in Paradise,
To-day the primal right we claim :
Fair mirror of the woods and skies,
We give to thee a name.

Lake of the pickerel !-let no more
The echoes answer back, "Great
Pond,"

But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore
And watching hills beyond,

Let Indian ghosts, if such there be
Who ply unseen their shadowy lines,
Call back the ancient name to thee,
As with the voice of pines.

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And thanks that from our daily need The joy of simple faith is born; That he who smites the summer weed, May trust thee for the autumn corn.

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;

Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; Who sows a field, or trains a flower,

Or plants a tree, is more than all.

For he who blesses most is blest;
And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest

An added beauty to the earth.

And, soon or late, to all that sow,

The time of harvest shall be given;

The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,

If not on earth, at last in heaven!

THE PREACHER.

ITS windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town;
The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of mystery;
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded capes that run
Into the sea-mist north and south;
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The foam-line of the harbor-bar.

Over the woods and meadow-lands
A crimson-tinted shadow lay
Of clouds through which the setting
day

Flung a slant glory far away.
It glittered on the wet sea-sands,
It flamed upon the city's panes,
Smote the white sails of ships that wore
Outward or in, and glided o'er

The steeples with their veering vanes!

Awhile my friend with rapid search O'erran the landscape. "Yonder spire

Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire; What is it, pray?"-"The Whitefield Church!

Walled about by its basement stones, There rest the marvellous prophet's bones."

Then as our homeward way we walked,
Of the great preacher's life we talked ;
And through the mystery of our theme
The outward glory seemed to stream,
And Nature's self interpreted
The doubtful record of the dead;
And every level beam that smote
The sails upon the dark afloat
A symbol of the light became
Which touched the shadows of our
blame

With tongues of Pentecostal flame.

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The land lies open and warm in the sun, Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain,

The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain!

But the living faith of the settlers old
A dead profession their children hold;
To the lust of office and greed of trade
A stepping-stone is the altar made.
The Church, to place and power the
door,

Rebukes the sin of the world no more.
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.
Everywhere is the grasping hand,
And eager adding of land to land;
And earth, which seemed to the fathers
meant

But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,
A nightly shelter to fold away
When the Lord should call at the break
of day,

Solid and steadfast seems to be,
And Time has forgotten Eternity!

But fresh and green from the rotting

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THE PREACHER.

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As the barley-winnower, holding with pain

Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain,
Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze
Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys,
So he who had waited long to hear
The sound of the Spirit drawing near,
Like that which the son of Iddo heard
When the feet of angels the myrtles
stirred,

Felt the answer of prayer, at last,
As over his church the afflatus passed,
Breaking its sleep as breezes break
To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake.
At first a tremor of silent fear,
The creep of the flesh at danger near,
A vague foreboding and discontent,
Over the hearts of the people went.
All nature warned in sounds and signs:
The wind in the tops of the forest pines
In the name of the Highest called to
prayer,

As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair.

Through ceiléd chambers of secret sin Sudden and strong the light shone in; A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs Startled the man of title-deeds;

The trembling hand of the worldling shook

The dust of years from the Holy Book; And the psalms of David, forgotten

long,

Took the place of the scoffer's song.

The impulse spread like the outward

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