458

PEACE IN BELIEVING.

Belief smooths down our thorny cares,
With shooting grain uproots the tares,
Our harp from off the willow takes

And every chord to music wakes,

Till Hope, laid icy in the tomb,

Springs up with life and beauty's bloom.

When night comes murky, drear, and damp,

Belief will feed and screen our lamp,

Upon our feet her sandals bind,
About our waist her girdle wind,

Then lend a staff, and lead the way,
"Till we walk forth to beaming day.

When all the fountains of the deep
Seem broken up o'er earth to sweep;
While billowy mountains toss our bark,
Belief's the dove, from out the ark,
Across the flood to stretch her wing,
And home the branch of olive bring.

Belief hath eyes so heavenly bright,
As on the cloud to cast their light,
"Till fair and glorious hues shall form
From drops and shades that robed the storm,

Bent o'er our world in peace, to show.
God's covenant sign, his unstrung bow.

When through a dry and thirsty land
The pilgrim treads the desert sand,

PEACE IN BELIEVING.

Belief brings distant prospect near,

With fruit, and bowers, and fountains clear,

Where, when he strikes his tent, he'll be

An heir of immortality.

While Unbelief would ever bring
A chain about our spirit's wing,
Belief will plume it o'er the grave—
Above the swell of Jordan's wave-
To fly, nor droop, 'till gently furled
In that sweet home the spirit world.

Hannah F. Gould.

459

Blessed are the Dead.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.-REV. xiv. 13.

Он, how blessed are ye whose toils are ended!
Who, through death, have unto God ascended!
Ye have risen

From the cares which keep us still in prison.

We are still as in a dungeon living,

Still oppressed with sorrow and misgiving;
Our undertakings

Are but toils, and troubles, and heart breakings.

Christ has wiped away your tears for ever;
Ye have that for which we still endeavor;
To you are chaunted

Songs which yet no mortal ear have haunted.

Ah! who would not, then, depart with gladness,
To inherit heaven for earthly sadness?

Who here would languish

Longer in bewailing and in anguish ?

BLESSED ARE THE DEAD.

461

Come, oh Christ, and loose the chains that bind us! Lead us forth, and cast this world behind us!

With thee, the Anointed,

Finds the soul its joy and rest appointed.

Henry W. Longfellow.

Of Many Martyrs.

SING we the peerless deeds of martyred saints,
Their glorious merits, and their portion blest;
Of all the conquerors the world has seen,
The greatest and the best.

Them in their day the insatiate world abhorred, Because they did forsake it, Lord, for Thee; Finding it all a barren waste, devoid

Of fruit, or flower, or tree.

They trod beneath them every threat of man, And came victorious all torments through; The iron hooks which piecemeal tore their flesh, Could not their souls subdue.

Scourged, crucified, like sheep to slaughter led,
Unmurmuring they met their cruel fate;
For conscious innocence their souls upheld,

In patient virtue great.