He shall direct thy wandering feet,
He shall prepare thy way.

Give to the winds thy fears;
Hope, and be undismayed;

God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,
God shall lift up thy head.

Through waves and clouds and storms
He gently clears thy way;

Wait thou His time; so shall this night
Soon end in joyous day.

What though thou rulest not?
Yet Heaven and earth and hell
Proclaim, God sitteth on the throne,
And ruleth all things well.

Leave to His sovereign sway
To choose and to command,

So shalt thou wondering own, His way
How wise, how strong His hand.

Thou seest our weakness, Lord!
Our hearts are known to Thee:
Oh! lift Thou up the sinking hand,
Confirm the feeble knee!

Let us, in life, in death,
Thy steadfast truth declare,

And publish, with our latest breath,
Thy love and guardian care!

- Translation of JOHN WESLEY.

6

ESSNER, SALOMON, a Swiss painter, engraver, and poet; born at Zürich, April 1, 1730; died there, March 2, 1788. His father was a bookseller at Zürich. The son was eminent as an artist

and prose poet, but also became a partner in the business of his father. Most of his works are prose poems. The best known of them are The Death of Abel (1758), and The First Navigator (1762). He furnished capital illustrations to his own poems. His poetry is distinguished for elegance of language and rhythmic metre, but his delineation of life departs so far from reality that his works have lost much of their former popularity. The following is a metrical translation of the opening of the prose-poem Semira and Semin:

A PICTURE OF THE DELUGE.

Now beneath the flood of night'

Shrouded the marble turrets are,
And 'gainst insular mountain height
The black, big waves are billowing far;
And lo! before the surging death
Isle after isle still vanisheth.

Remains one lonely speck above
The fury of the climbing flood:
A grisly crowd still vainly strove
To win that safer altitude;
And the cries of despair

Still rang on the air.

As the rushing wave pursued in its pride,
And dashed them from its slippery side.

Oh, is not yonder shore less steep,
Ye happier few? Escape the deep!
Upon its crest the crowd assembles;
Lo! the peopled mountain trembles!
The rushing waters exalt it on high;
Shaken and shivered from brow to base
It slides amain, unwieldily,
Into the universal sea;

And instantly the echoing sky

Howls to the howl of the hapless race That burden the hill, or under it die.

Yonder, the torrent of waters behold!
Into the chaos of ocean hath rolled

The virtuous son, with his sire so old!

He, strengthened with duty and proud of his strength
Sought from that desolate island, now sunken,
To conquer the perilous billows at length;

But their very last sob the mad waters have drunken! To the deluge's dire unatonable tomb

Yon mother abandons the children she tried

In vain to preserve; and the watery gloom

Swells over the dead, as they float side by side; And she hath plunged after! How madly she died!

From forth the waters waste and wild
The loftiest summit sternly smiled;
And that but to the sky disclosed
Its rugged top, and that sad pair
Who, to this hour of wrath exposed,
Stood in the howling storm-blast there
Semin, the noble, young, and free,
To whom this world's most lovely one
Had vowed her heart's idolatry -
His own beloved Semira - set
On this dark mountain's coronet:

And they were mid the flood alone.

Broke on them the wild waters; - all
The heaven was thunder, and a pall;
Below, the ocean's roar;

Around, deep darkness, save the flash
Of lightning on the waves, that dash
Without a bed or shore.

And every cloud from the lowering sky
Threatened destruction fierce and nigh;
And every surge rolled drearily,

With carcasses borne on ooze and foam,
Yawning, as to its moving tomb
It looked for further prey to come.

Semira to her fluttering breast

Folded her lover; and their hearts

Throbbed on each other, unrepressed,
Blending as in one bosom, while
The raindrops on her faded cheek
With her tears mingled, but not a smile;-
In horror, nothing now can speak;

Such horror nothing now imparts.

There is no hope of safety - none.
My Semira, my beloved one!
Oh, woe! Oh, desolation! Death
Sways all; above, around, beneath;
Near and more near he climbs; and oh,
Which of the waves besieging so
Will whelm us? Take me to thy cold
And shuddering arms' beloved fold!
My God! look! what a wave comes on!
It glitters in the lightning dim-
It passes over us!"- 'Tis gone,

And senseless sinks the maid on him.

Semin embraced the fainting maid;

Words faltered on his quivering lips,
And he was mute; and all was shade,
And all around him in eclipse.
Was it one desolate hideous spot?
A wreck of worlds? He saw it not!
He saw but her, beloved so well,

So death-like on his bosom lay,
Felt the cold pang that o'er him fell,
Heard but his beating heart. Away,
Grasp of dark Agony's iron hand!

Off from his heart thine icy touch!
Off from his lips thy colorless band,
Off from his soul thy wintry clutch!

Love conquers Death; and he hath kissed

Her bleached cheeks by the cold rain bleached;

He hath folded her to his bosom; and, list!

His tender words her heart have reached,

She hath awakened, and she looks

Upon her lover tenderly,

Whose tenderness the Flood rebukes,

As on destroying goeth he.

"O God of judgment!" she cried aloud, "Refuge or pity is there none?

Waves rave, and thunder rends the cloud, And the winds howl, 'Be vengeance done!' Our years have innocently sped,

My Semin; thou wert ever good. Woe's me! my joy and pride have fled! All but my love is now subdued!

And thou to me who gavest life,

Torn from my side. I saw thy strife With the wild surges, and thy head Heave evermore above the water, Thine arms exalted, and outspread,

For the last time to bless thy daughter!
The earth is now a lonely isle!

Yet 'twere a paradise to me,
Wert, Semin, thou with me the while.
Oh, let me die embracing thee!

Is there no pity, God above!

For innocence and blameless love?

But what shall innocence plead before Thee
Great God? Thus dying I adore Thee!"

Still his beloved the youth sustains,
As she in the storm-blast shivers:
"Tis done! No hope of life remains;
No mortal howls among the rivers! -
Semira, the next moment is

Our last; gaunt Death ascends! Lo, he
Doth clasp our thighs, and the abyss.

-

Yearns to embrace us eagerly! —
We will not mourn a common lot:
Life, what art thou, when joyfullest,
Wisest, noblest, greatest, best-
Life longest, and that most delightest?
A dewdrop, by the dawn begot,

That on the rock to-day is brightest;
To-morrow doth it fade away,
Or fall into the ocean's spray.