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That even His brightness may not quite efface
The soul's earth-features,

That the dear human likeness each may trace
Glorified creatures;

That we may not cease loving, only taught

Holier desiring;

More faith, more patience; with more wisdom fraught, Higher aspiring.

That we may do all work we left undone

Through sad unmeetness;

From height to height celestial passing on
Towards full completeness.

Then, strong Azrael, be thy supreme call
Soft as Spring-breezes,

Or like this blast, whose loud fiend festival
My heart's blood freezes,

I will not fear thee. If thou safely keep

My soul, God's giving,

And my soul's soul, I, waking from death-sleep,
Shall first know living.

A SILLY SONG.

O heart, my heart!" she said, and heard
His mate the blackbird calling,
While through the sheen of the garden green

May rain was softly falling,

Aye softly, softly falling.

The buttercups across the field

Made sunshine rifts of splendor:

The round snow bud of the thorn in the wood
Peeped through its leafage tender,

As the rain came softly falling.

"O heart, my heart!" she said and smiled,
There's not a tree of the valley,

Or a leaf I wis which the sun's soft kiss
Freshens in yonder alley,

Where the drops keep ever falling,—

There's not a foolish flower i' the grass,

Or bird through the woodland calling,
So glad again of the coming rain
As I of these tears now falling,-
These happy tears down falling.”

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

TUNE-"God rest ye, merry gentlemen."

God rest ye, merry gentlemen; let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day.
The dawn rose red o'er Bethlehem, the stars shone through the

gray,

When Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day.

God rest ye, little children; let nothing you affright,

For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night;
Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay,

When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas

day.

God rest ye, all good Christians; upon this blessed morn
The Lord of all good Christians was of a woman born:
Now all your sorrows He doth heal, your sins He takes away;
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day.

С.Р. Станево

THE BOBOLINKS.

When Nature had made all her birds,
And had no cares to think on,
She gave a rippling laugh-and out
There flew a Bobolinkon.

She laughed again,-out flew a mate.

A breeze of Eden bore them

Across the fields of Paradise,

The sunshine reddening o'er them.

Incarnate sport and holiday,

They flew and sang forever;

Their souls through June were all in tune, Their wings were weary never.

The blithest song of breezy farms,
Quaintest of field-note flavors,
Exhaustless fount of trembling trills
And demisemiquavers.

Their tribe, still drunk with air and light
And perfume of the meadow,
Go reeling up and down the sky,

In sunshine and in shadow.

One springs from out the dew-wet grass,
Another follows after;

The morn is thrilling with their songs

And peals of fairy laughter.

From out the marshes and the brook
They set the tall reeds swinging,
And meet and frolic in the air,

Half prattling and half singing.

When morning winds sweep meadow lands
In green and russet billows,

And toss the lonely elm-tree's boughs,
And silver all the willows,

I see you buffeting the breeze,

Or with its motion swaying,

Your notes half-drowned against the wind

Or down the current playing.

When far away o'er grassy flats,

Where the thick wood commences,

The white-sleeved mowers look like specks

Beyond the zigzag fences,

And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam
White in the pale-blue distance,

I hear the saucy minstrels still
In chattering persistence.

When Eve her domes of opal fire
Piles round the blue horizon,

Or thunder rolls from hill to hill

A Kyrie Eleison,—

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