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THE STAR OF CALVARY.

Threads through the noiseless olive trees,
Like some unquiet thing

Which playeth in the darkness, when
The leaves are whispering.

Mount Calvary! Mount Calvary,

All sorrowfully still,

That mournful tread, it rends the heart

With an unwelcome thrill;

The mournful tread of them that crowd
Thy melancholy hill!

There is a cross, not one alone,

'Tis even three I count,

Like columns on the mossy marge
Of some old Grecian fount;
So pale they stand, so drearily,
On that mysterious Mount.

Behold, O Israel! behold,
It is no human One,
That ye have dared to crucify.

What evil hath he done?

It is your King, O Israel!

The God-begotten Son!

A wreath of thorns, a wreath of thorns!
Why have ye crowned him so!

That brow is bathed in agony,

THE STAR OF CALVARY.

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Ye saw not the immortal trace

Of Deity below.

It is the foremost of the Three;

Resignedly they fall,

Those death-like, drooping features,
Unbending, blighted all :

The Man of Sorrows, how he bears
The agonizing thrall!

"Tis fixed on thee, O Israel!

His gaze!-how strange to brook; But that there's mercy blended deep In each reproachful look,

"Twould search thee, till the very heart Its withered home forsook.

To God! to God! how eloquent

The cry, as if it grew,

By those cold lips unuttered, yet

All heartfelt rising through,

"Father in heaven! forgive them, for

They know not what they do!"

Hawthorne.

The Burial.

Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. -ST. MARK XV. 43.

AT length the worst is o'er, and Thou art laid
Deep in thy darksome bed;

All still and cold beneath yon dreary stone,
Thy sacred form is gone;

Around those lips where power and mercy hung,
The dews of death have clung

The dull earth o'er Thee and thy foes around,
Thou sleep'st a silent corse, in funeral fetters wound.

Sleep'st Thou indeed? or is thy spirit fled,
At large among the dead?

Whether in Eden bowers thy welcome voice
Wake Abraham to rejoice,

Or in some drearier scene thine eye controls
The thronging band of souls;

That, as thy blood won earth, thine agony

Might set the shadowy realm from sin and sorrow free.

THE BURIAL.

Where'er Thou roam'st, one happy soul, we know,
Seen at thy side in woe,

Waits on thy triumph-even as all the blest
With him and Thee shall rest.

Each on his cross, by Thee we hang a while,
Watching thy patient smile,

Till we have learned to say, ""Tis justly done
Only in glory, LORD, thy sinful servant own."

Soon wilt Thou take us to thy tranquil bower
To rest one little hour,

Till thine elect are number'd, and the grave
Call thee to come and save;

Then on thy bosom borne shall we descend,
Again with earth to blend,

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Earth all refined with bright supernal fires, Tinctured with holy blood, and wing'd with pure desires.

O come that day, when in this restless heart

Earth shall resign her part,

When in the grave with Thee my limbs shall rest,
My soul with Thee be blest!

But stay, presumptuous-CHRIST with thee abides
In the rock's dreary sides;

He from the stone will wring celestial dew,

If but the prisoner's heart be faithful found and true.

John Keble.

The Dirge.

And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts and returned.-ST. LUKE Xxiii. 48.

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Where with the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heav'nly Infant's birth,
My muse with angels did divide to sing;

But headlong Joy is ever on the wing,

In wintry solstice like the shorten'd light,
Soon swallowed up in dark and long outliving night.

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,

Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,

Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,
Which he for us did freely undergo:

Most perfect Hero tried in heaviest plight,

Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

He sovran Priest stooping his regal head,

That dropped with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,

His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies,