Faith-Knowledge of Peace.

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"Take of this grain, which in my garden grows,

And grows for you;

Make bread of it; and that repose

And peace which everywhere

With so much earnestness thou dost pursue,
Is only there."

HERBERT.

AWAKE.

OH, Thou! who in the garden's shade
Didst wake Thy weary ones again,
Who slumber'd in that fearful hour,
Forgetful of Thy pain.

Bend o'er us now, as over them,

And set our sleep-bound spirits free, Nor leave us slumbering on the watch Our souls should keep with Thee!

J. E. WHITTIER.

HUMAN LIFE.

"In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withered."-PSALM XC. 6.

WALK'D the fields at morning's prime,

The grass was ripe for mowing;
The skylark sang his matin chime,
And all was brightly glowing.

"And thus," I cried, "the ardent Boy,
His pulse with rapture beating,
Deems Life's inheritance is joy,—
The future proudly greeting."

I wandered forth at noon:-alas !
On earth's maternal bosom
The scythe had left the withering grass,
And stretched the faded blossom.

And thus, I thought with many a sigh,
The hopes we fondly cherish,

Like flowers which blossom but to die,
Seem only born to perish.

Human Life.

Once more, at eve, abroad I strayed,

Through lovely hayfields, musing; While every breeze that round me played Rich fragrance was diffusing.

The perfumed air, the hush of eve,
To purer hopes appealing,

O'er thoughts perchance too prone to grieve,
Scatter'd the balm of healing.

For thus "the actions of the just,"

When memory hath enshrined them,

E'en from the dark and silent dust

Their odour leave behind them.

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BERNARD BARTON.

A POSY.

I MADE a posy, while the day ran by;
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.

But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,

And wither in my hand.

C

HERBERT.

THE DEAD FLOWER.

WALKED the other day (to spend my hour)
Into a field,

Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
A gallant flowre;

But winter now had ruffled all the bowre
And curious store

I knew there heretofore.

Yet I, whose search loved not to peep and peer
In th' face of things,

Thought with myself, there might be other Springs
Besides this here,

Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year; And so the flowre

Might have some other bowre.

Then taking up what I could nearest spie,
I digged about

That place where I had seen him to grow out,
And by the bye

I saw the warm Recluse alone to lie

Where, fresh and green,

He lived, of us unseen.

The Dead Flower.

Many a question intricate and rare

Did I there strow,

But all I could extort was, that he now
Did there repair

Such losses as befel him in this air;

And would, ere long,

Come forth most fair and young.

This past, I threw the clothes quite o'er his head,
And stung with fear

Of my own frailty, dropt down many a tear
Upon his bed:

Then sighing whispered,—" Happy are the dead:
What peace doth now

Rock him asleep below!"

And yet how few believe such doctrine springs
From a poor root,

Which all the winter sleeps here underfoot,
And hath no wings

To raise it to the truth and light of things,
But is still trod

By every wandering clod.

O Thou, whose Spirit did at first inflame

And warm the dead,

And by a sacred incubation fed

With life this frame,

Which once had neither being, forme, nor name!
Grant I may so

Thy steps track here below,

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