ALL'S WELL.

SWEET-VOICED Hope, thy fine discourse
Foretold not half life's good to me:
Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force
To show how sweet it is to Be!
Thy witching dream

And pictured scheme

To match the fact still want the power;
Thy promise brave

From birth to grave
Life's boon may beggar in an hour.

Ask and receive, 't is sweetly said; Yet what to plead for know I not; For Wish is worsted, Hope o'ersped,

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Mine also is,

If I would pray,

I've naught to say

But this, that God may be God still;

For Him to live Is still to give,

And sweeter than my wish His will.

And drowns the dream

In larger stream,

As morning drinks the morning star.

ROYALTY.

THAT regal soul I reverence, in whose

eyes

Suffices not all worth the city knows To pay that debt which his own heart he owes;

For less than level to his bosom rise The low crowd's heaven and stars: above their skies

Runneth the road his daily feet have pressed;

A loftier heaven he beareth in his breast, And o'er the summits of achieving hies With never a thought of merit or of meed; Choosing divinest labors through a pride Of soul, that holdeth appetite to feed Ever on angel-herbage, naught beside; Nor praises more himself for hero-deed Than stones for weight, or open seas for tide.

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

I SAY to thee, do thou repeat
To the first man thou mayest meet,
In lane, highway, or open street,-

That he, and we, and all men move
Under a canopy of Love,
As broad as the blue sky above:

That doubt and trouble, fear and pain, And anguish, all are sorrows vain; That death itself shall not remain :

That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread,
Through dark ways underground be led;

Yet, if we will our Guide obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest way,
Shall issue out in heavenly day.

And we, on divers shores now cast, Shall meet, our perilous voyage past, All in our Father's home at last.

And ere thou leave them, say thou this, Yet one word more: They only miss The winning of that final bliss

Who will not count it true that Love, Blessing, not cursing, rules above, And that in it we live and move.

And one thing further make him know,
That to believe these things are so,
This firm faith never to forego, -

Despite of all which seems at strife With blessing, and with curses rife, That this is blessing, this is life.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. [1819-1861.]

THE NEW SINAI.

Lo, here is God, and there is God!
Believe it not, O man!

In such vain sort to this and that
The ancient heathen ran;
Though old Religion shake her head,
And say, in bitter grief,
The day behold, at first foretold,
Of atheist unbelief:

Take better part, with manly heart,
Thine adult spirit can;
Receive it not, believe it not,
Believe it not, O Man!

As men at dead of night awaked

With cries, "The king is here," Rush forth and greet whome'er they meet, Whoe'er shall first appear;

"He is! They are!" in distance seen On yon Olympus high,

In those Avernian woods abide,

And walk this azure sky: "They are! They are!" to every show Its eyes the baby turned, And blazes sacrificial, tall,

On thousand altars burned: "They are! They are!"-On Sinai's top

Far seen the lightning's shone,
The thunder broke, a trumpet spoke,
Ard God said, "I am One."

God spake it out, "I, God, am One";
The unheeding ages ran,
And baby thoughts again, again,

Have dogged the growing man :
And as of old from Sinai's top

God said that God is One,
By Science strict so speaks he now
To tell us, There is None!
Earth goes by chemic forces; Heaven's
A Mécanique Céleste!

And heart and mind of human kind
A watch-work as the rest!

Is this a Voice, as was the Voice
Whose speaking told abroad,
When thunder pealed, and mountain
reeled,

The ancient truth of God?

Ah, not the Voice; 't is but the cloud,
The outer darkness dense,

Where image none, nor e'er was seen
Similitude of sense.

"T is but the cloudy darkness dense,
That wrapt the Mount around;
While in amaze the people stays,
To hear the Coming Sound.

Some chosen prophet-soul the while

Shall dare, sublimely meek,
Within the shroud of blackest cloud
The Deity to seek:
Mid atheistic systems dark,

And darker hearts' despair,

That soul has heard perchance his word, And on the dusky air,

His skirts, as passed He by, to see

Hath strained on their behalf, Who on the plain, with dance amain, Adore the Golden Calf.

'Tis but the cloudy darkness dense;

Though blank the tale it tells,
No God, no Truth! yet He, in sooth,
Is there, within it dwells;
Within the sceptic darkness deep

He dwells that none may see,
Till idol forms and idol thoughts
Have passed and ceased to be:
No God, no Truth! ah though, in sooth,
So stand the doctrine's half;
On Egypt's track return not back,
Nor own the Golden Calf.

Take better part, with manlier heart, Thine adult spirit can:

No God, no Truth, receive it ne'erBelieve it ne'er-O Man!

But turn not then to seek again

What first the ill began;

No God, it saith; ah, wait in faith
God's self-completing plan;
Receive it not, but leave it not,
And wait it out, O man!

The Man that went the cloud within

Is gone and vanished quite; "He cometh not," the people cries, "Nor bringeth God to sight": "Lo these thy gods, that safety give, Adore and keep the feast!" Deluding and deluded cries

The Prophet's brother- Priest:
And Israel all bows down to fall
Before the gilded beast.

Devout, indeed! that priestly creed,
O Man, reject as sin!
The clouded hill attend thou still,
And him that went within.

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He yet shall bring some worthy thing
For waiting souls to see;
Some sacred word that he hath heard
Their light and life shall be;
Some lofty part, than which the heart
Adopt no nobler can,

Thou shalt receive, thou shalt believe,
And thou shalt do, O Man!

FROM THE "BOTHIE OF TOBER-NAVUOLICH."

WHERE does Circumstance end, and Providence, where begins it?

What are we to resist, and what are we to be friends with?

If there is battle 't is battle by night; I stand in the darkness,

Here in the midst of men, Ionian and Dorian on both sides,

Signal and password known; which is friend, which is foeman?

Is it a friend? I doubt, though he speak with the voice of a brother.

O that the armies indeed were arrayed!
O joy of the onset !

Sound, thou trumpet of God, come forth
Great Cause, and array us!
King and leader appear, thy soldiers an-
swering seek thee.

Would that the armies indeed were
arrayed. O where is the battle!
Neither battle I see, nor arraying, nor
King in Israel,

Only infinite jumble and mess and dislocation,

Backed by a solemn appeal, "For God's sake do not stir there!"

THE STREAM OF LIFE.

O STREAM descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flow'rets blow, the grasses grow,

The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,
The fields the laborers till,
The houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still,

O life descending into death Our waking eyes behold,

QUA CURSUM VENTUS.

As ships becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day

Are scarce, long leagues apart, de-
scried;

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the selfsame seas
By each was cleaving, side by side:

E'en so, but why the tale reveal
Of those whom, year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,

Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered: Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,

Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! Inlight, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides,

To that, and your own selves, be true.

But O blithe breeze, and O great seas,
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last!

One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare,
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
At last, at last, unite them there

SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.

[U. S. A.]

THE GOLDEN SUNSET.

THE golden sea its mirror spreads
Beneath the golden skies,

And but a narrow strip between
Of land and shadow lies.

The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds,
Dissolved in glory float,

And, midway of the radiant flood,
Hangs silently the boat.

The sea is but another sky,

The sky a sea as well,

And which is earth, and which the heav

ens,

The eye can scarcely tell.

So when for us life's evening hour
Soft passing shall descend,
May glory born of earth and heaven,
The earth and heavens blend;

Flooded with peace the spirit float,

With silent rapture glow, Till where earth ends and heaven begins The soul shall scarcely know.

SARAH J. WILLIAMS.

QUIET FROM GOD.

QUIET from God! It cometh not to still
The vast and high aspirings of the soul,
The deep emotions which the spirit fill,
And speed its purpose onward to the
goal;

It dims not youth's bright eye,
Bends not joy's lofty brow,
No guiltless ecstasy

Need in its presence bow.

It comes not in a sullen form, to place Life's greatest good in an inglorious

rest; Through a dull, beaten track its way to trace,

And to lethargic slumber lull the breast;
Action may be its sphere,

Mountain paths, boundless fields,
O'er billows its career:

This is the power it yields.