Oh happiest moment of all thou hast past! When thy soul to earth's vanity wakens at last! And thou feel'st that its pleasures and aims are

but dust,

When heaven is thy home, and Jehovah thy trust!

A DROP OF DEW.

Andrew Marvell.

SEE how the orient dew,

Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,

Yet careless of its mansion new,

For the clear region where 'twas born,
Round in itself encloses;

And in its little globe's extent

Frames, as it can, its native element.

How it the purple flower does slight,

Scarce touching where it lies!

But, gazing back upon the skies,

Shines with a mournful light,

Like its own tear,

Because so long divided from the sphere.

Restless it rolls, and insecure,
Trembling, lest it grow impure;

Till the warm sun pities its pain,

And to the skies exhales it back again,

So the soul, that drop, that ray

Of the clear fountain of eternal day,

Could it within the human flower be seen, Remembering still its former height,

Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green ;

And, recollecting its own light,

Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express The greater heaven in a heaven less.

In how coy a figure wound,

Every way

it turns away !

So the world excluding round,

Yet receiving in the day :
Dark beneath, but bright above ;
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go;
How girt and ready to ascend:
Moving but on a point below,

It all about does upwards bend.

Such did the manna's sacred dew distil,

White and entire, although congeal'd and chill; Congeal'd on earth; but does, dissolving, run Into the glories of th' Almighty Sun.

PAGAN DARKNESS.

Cotterill.

O'ER the realms of pagan darkness,
Let the eye of Pity gaze;

See the kindreds of the people,

Lost in sin's bewild'ring maze :

Darkness brooding on the face of all the earth.

Light of them who sit in error,

Rise and shine; thy blessings bring:
Light to lighten all the Gentiles,

Rise with healing in thy wing:

To thy brightness let all kings and nations come.

Let the heathen, now adoring

Idol gods of wood and stone,
Come, and worshipping before Thee,

Serve the living God alone:

Let thy glory fill the earth, as floods the sea.

Thou to whom all power is given,

Speak the word; at thy command,
Let the company of preachers

Spread thy name from land to land:

Lord, be with them always, till time's latest end.

ADORING GRATITUDE.

OH! sweet employment, sweet indeed
To hearts attuned and strung by heaven,
To pay to God the grateful meed,

For hope inspired, and sin forgiven!

Father! we thank thee !-babes in mind,
We hang upon thy smile alone;
No joy, apart from Thee, we find,
No care or grief before thy throne!

When wondering Reason takes her flight,
Thy mighty universe to scan,

Sees worlds on worlds, 'mid fields of light,
Then backward looks-Lord! what is man?

But what art thou ?-Transcendant Love,
Beyond the flight of thought or speech!
Soaring a seraph's wing above,

Yet stooping to an infant's reach!

THE GOOD EXPLORE.

Byron.

-The good explore

For peace, those realms where guilt can never soar, The proud, the wayward-who have fixed below Their joy, and find this world enough for woe, Lose in that one their all,-perchance, a mite, But who with patience parts with all delight?

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Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern,

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Hide hearts where grief has little left to learn ; And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost, In smiles that least befit who wear them most.

ON THE DESOLATION OF ISRAEL.

Byron.

OH! weep for those that wept by Babel's stream, Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream;