"My voice can be heard, and my arguments weighed, "Which explains why such numerous converts of late

"Are under my love-breathing standard arrayed, "Who once, beneath yours, were excited to hate.

"Superstition must throw off Religion's disguise;

"For men, now enlightened, not darkling, like owls, "While they reverence priests who are holy and wise, "Will no longer be hoodwinked by cassocks or cowls.

"If, sisters! forgetting your primitive troth,

"You would still part the world into tyrants and slaves,

"What wonder that sages should look on you both "As the virtues of dupes for the profits of knaves?

"You would separate? Do so

scope;

- I give you full

"But reflect, you are both of you nought when we

part;

"While I, 'tis well known, can supply Faith and

Hope,

"When I choose for my temple an innocent heart."

MORAL ALCHEMY.

THE toils of Alchemists, whose vain pursuit
Sought to transmute

Dross into gold, — their secrets and their store

Of mystic lore,

What to the jibing modern do they seem?
An ignis fatuus chase, a phantasy, a dream!

Yet for enlightened moral Alchemists

There still exists

A philosophic stone, whose magic spell

No tongue may tell,

Which renovates the soul's decaying health,

And what it touches turns to purest mental wealth.

This secret is revealed in every trace

Whose seeming frown invariably tends

Of Nature's face,

To smiling ends,

Transmuting ills into their opposite,

And all that shocks the sense to subsequent delight.—

Seems Earth unlovely in her robe of snow?

Where Nature in her subterranean Ark,

Then look below,

Silent and dark,

Already has each floral germ unfurled

That shall revive and clothe the dead and naked world.

Behold those perished flowers to earth consigned -
They, like mankind,
Seek in their grave new birth. By nature's power,
Each in its hour,

Clothed in new beauty, from its tomb shall spring,
And from its tube or chalice heavenward incense fling.

Laboratories of a wider fold

I now behold,

Where are prepared the harvests yet unborn

Of wine, oil, corn.

In those mute rayless banquet halls I see

Myriads of coming feasts with all their revelry.

Yon teeming and minuter cells enclose

The embryos

Of fruits and seeds, food for the feathered race,

Whose chanted grace,

Swelling in choral gratitude on high,

Shall with thanksgiving anthems melodize the sky. —

And what materials, mystic Alchemist!

To fabricate this ever-varied feast,

Dost Thou enlist

For man, bird, beast?

Whence the life, plenty, music, beauty, bloom?

From silence, languor, death, unsightliness, and

gloom!

From Nature's magic hand, whose touch makes sadness Eventual gladness,

The reverent moral Alchemist may learn

The art to turn

Fate's roughest, hardest, most forbidding dross,
Into the mental gold that knows not change or loss. -

Lose we a valued friend?- To soothe our woe

Let us bestow

On those who still survive an added love,

So shall we prove,

Howe'er the dear departed we deplore,

For our sane years, perchance of lengthened scope:

Now does our hope

Point to the day when sickness, taking flight,

Shall make us better feel health's exquisite delight.

In losing fortune, many a lucky elf

Has found himself.

As all our moral bitters are designed

To brace the mind,

And renovate its healthy tone, the wise

Their sorest trials hail as blessings in disguise.

There is no gloom on earth; for God above

Chastens in love,

Transmuting sorrows into golden joy

Free from alloy.

His dearest attribute is still to bless,

And man's most welcome hymn is grateful cheerful

ness.

THE HEART'S SANCTUARY.

FOR man there still is left one sacred charter ;
One refuge still remains for human woes.
Victim of care! or persecution's martyr!
Who seek'st a sure asylum from thy foes,
Learn that the holiest, safest, purest, best,
Is man's own breast.

There is a solemn sanctuary founded

By God himself; not for transgressors meant ; But that the man oppressed, the spirit wounded, And all beneath the world's injustice bent, Might turn from outward wrong, turmoil and din, To peace within!