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In such a bright late quiet, would that I

Might wear out life, like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks, And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,

And music of kind voices ever nigh;

And, when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

Hymn for the Massachusetts Charitable Association.

PIERPONT.

LOUD o'er thy savage child,
O God, the night wind roars,
As, houseless, in the wild
He bows him, and adores.
Thou seest him there,

As to the sky
He lifts his eye
Alone in prayer

Thine inspiration comes!
In skill the blessing falls!
The field around him blooms,
The temple rears its walls,
And saints adore,

And music swells,
Where savage yells
Were heard before.

To honor thee, dread Power,

Our SKILL and STRENGTH combine;

And temple, tomb and tower

Attest these gifts of thine;

A swelling dome

For Pride they gild,
For Peace they build
An humbler home.

By these our fathers' host
Was led to victory first,

When on our guardless coast
The cloud of battle burst.

Through storm and spray,
By these controlled,
Our navies hold

Their thundering way.

Great Source of every art!
Our homes, our pictured halls,
Our thronged and busy mart
That heaves its granite walls,
And shoots to heaven

Its glittering spires, .
To catch the fires
Of morn and even,-

These, and the breathing forms
The brush or chisel gives,―
With this, when marble warms,
With that, when canvass lives,-
These all combine,

In countless ways,
To swell thy praise;
For all are thine!

The little Beach Bird.-RICHARD H. DANA.

THOU little bird, thou dweller by the sea,
Why takest thou its melancholy voice?
Why with that boding cry

O'er the waves dost thou fly?

O, rather, bird, with me

Through the fair land rejoice!

Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale,
As driven by a beating storm at sea;

Thy cry is weak and scared,

As if thy mates had shared

The doom of us. Thy wail

What does it bring to me?

Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, Restless and sad; as if, in strange accord

With motion, and with roar

Of waves that drive to shore,

One spirit did ye urge

The Mystery-the Word.

Of thousands thou, both sepulchre and pall,
Old Ocean, art! A requiem o'er the dead,
From out thy gloomy cells,

A tale of mourning tells

Tells of man's wo and fall,
His sinless glory fled.

Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight

Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring

Thy spirit never more.

Come, quit with me the shore,

For gladness and the light,

Where birds of summer sing.

Address of the Sylph of Autumn to the Bard.— WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

AND now, in accents deep and low,
Like voice of fondly-cherished wo,
The Sylph of Autumn sad:

Though I may not of raptures sing,
That graced the gentle song of Spring,
Like Summer playful pleasures bring,
Thy youthful heart to glad:

Yet still may I in hope aspire
Thy heart to touch with chaster fire,
And purifying love:

For I, with vision high and holy,

And spell of quick'ning melancholy,
Thy soul from sublunary folly

First raised to worlds above.

What though be mine the treasures fair
Of purple grape, and yellow pear,
And fruits of various hue,

And harvests rich of golden grain,
That dance in waves along the plain
To merry song of reaping swain,
Beneath the welkin blue;

With these I may not urge my suit,
Of Summer's patient toil the fruit,

For mortal purpose given;

Nor may it fit my sober mood
To sing of sweetly murmuring flood,
Or dies of many-colored wood,

That mock the bow of heaven.

But, know, 'twas mine the secret power
That waked thee at the midnight hour,
In bleak November's reign:
'Twas I the spell around thee cast,
When thou didst hear the hollow blast
In murmurs tell of pleasures past,
That ne'er would come again;—

And led thee, when the storm was o'er,
To hear the sullen ocean roar,

By dreadful calm oppressed;

Which still, though not a breeze was there,
Its mountain-billows heaved in air,
As if a living thing it were,

That strove in vain for rest.

'Twas I, when thou, subdued by wo,
Didst watch the leaves descending slow,
To each a moral gave;

And, as they moved, in mournful train,
With rustling sound, along the plain,
Taught them to sing a seraph's strain
Of peace within the grave.

And then, upraised thy streaming eye,
I met thee in the western sky,

In pomp of evening cloud,

That, while with varying form it rolled,
Some wizard's castle seemed of gold,
And now a crimsoned knight of old,
Or king in purple proud.

And last, as sunk the setting sun,
And Evening, with her shadows dun,
The gorgeous pageant passed,
'Twas then of life a mimic show,
Of human grandeur here below,
Which thus beneath the fatal blow
Of Death must fall at last.

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To yonder orbs on high,

And think how wondrous, how sublime
'Twere upwards to their spheres to climb,
And live beyond the reach of Time,
Child of Eternity!

Omnipresence.-ANONYMOUS.

THERE is an unseen Power around,
Existing in the silent air:

Where treadeth man, where space is found,
Unheard, unknown, that Power is there.

And not when bright and busy day

Is round us with its crowds and cares, And not when night, with solem sway,

Bids awe-hushed souls breathe forth in prayers

Not when, on sickness' weary couch,

He writhes with pain's deep, long-drawn groan,
Not when his steps in freedom touch
The fresh green turf-is man alone.

In proud Belshazzar's gilded hall,
'Mid music, lights, and revelry,
That Present Spirit looked on all,
From crouching slave to royalty.

When sinks the pious Christian's soul,
And scenes of horror daunt his eye,
He hears it whispered through the air,
"A Power of Mercy still is nigh."

The Power that watches, guides, defends,
Till man becomes a lifeless sod,

Till earth is nought,-nought, earthly friends,--
That omnipresent Power-is God.

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