SABBATH EVENING TWILIGHT. Whether safe moored in love's retreat, Or severed wide by mount and seaThis hour, in spirit, we would meet, And urge to Heaven our mutual plea. O, tell me if this hallowed hour Still finds thee constant at our shrine, Still witnesses thy fervent prayer Ascending warm and true with mine! Faithful through every change of wo, My heart still flies to meet thee there : "Twould sooth this very heart to know That thine responded every prayer. 65 SUNRISE ON THE HILLS. BY H. W. LONGFELLOW. I STOOD upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch And woods were brightened, and soft gales The clouds were far beneath me :-bathed in light Like hosts in battle overthrown, As many a pinnacle with shifting glance, Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance, The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft. Where upward in the mellow blush of day SUNRISE ON THE HILLS. I heard the distant waters dash I saw the current whirl and flash- The woods were bending with a silent reach. The musick of the village-bell Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills, And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills, That faint and far the glen sent out, Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke If thou art worn and hard beset With sorrows that thou wouldst forget- Dim the sweet look that Nature wears, 67 THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN. BY H. F. GOULD. I AM a Pebble! and yield to none !” The pelting hail and the drizzling rain And many a foot on me has trod, That's gone from sight, and under the sod! Rattling along from the restless bough?” The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute, And lay for a moment abashed and mute; THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN. She never before had been so near And soon, in the earth, she sunk away From the comfortless spot where the Pebble lay. But it was not long ere the soil was broke By the peering head of an infant oak! And, as it arose and its branches spread, The Pebble looked up, and wondering said: "A modest Acorn! never to tell What was enclosed in its simple shell; That the pride of the forest was folded up 69 |