Our river by its valley-born

Was never yet forgotten.

The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills

The summer air with clangor ;

The war-storm shakes the solid hills

Beneath its tread of anger:

Young eyes that last year smiled in ours

Now point the rifle's barrel,

And hands then stained with fruits and flowers

Bear redder stains of quarrel.

But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on, And rivers still keep flowing,

The dear God still his rain and sun

On good and ill bestowing.

His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and wait!"

His flowers are prophesying

That all we dread of change or fate

His love is underlying.

And thou, O Mountain-born!

We ask the wise Allotter

Than for the firmness of thy shore,

The calmness of thy water,

The cheerful lights that overlay

Thy rugged slopes with beauty, To match our spirits to our day

And make a joy of duty.

ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER.

A

NDREW RYKMAN's dead and gone :

You can see his leaning slate

In the graveyard, and thereon

Read his name and date.

"Trust is truer than our fears,"

Runs the legend through the moss,

"Gain is not in added years,

Nor in death is loss."

Still the feet that thither trod,
All the friendly eyes are dim;
Only Nature, now, and God

Have a care for him.

There the dews of quiet fall,

Singing birds and soft winds stray:

Shall the tender Heart of all

Be less kind than they?

What he was and what he is

They who ask may haply find, If they read this prayer of his Which he left behind.

Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare
Shape in words a mortal's prayer!
Prayer, that, when my day is done,
And I see its setting sun,

Shorn and beamless, cold and dim,
Sink beneath the horizon's rim,
When this ball of rock and clay
Crumbles from my feet away,

And the solid shores of sense

Melt into the vague immense,

Father! I may come to Thee

Even with the beggar's plea,

As the poorest of Thy poor,
With my needs, and nothing more.

Not as one who seeks his home
With a step assured I come;
Still behind the tread I hear
Of my life-companion, Fear;
Still a shadow deep and vast
From my westering feet is cast,
Wavering, doubtful, undefined,
Never shapen nor outlined:
From myself the fear has grown,
And the shadow is my own.
Yet, O Lord, through all a sense
Of Thy tender providence
Stays my failing heart on Thee,

And confirms the feeble knee;