THE GREAT REFINER. 'He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.' 'Tis sweet to know that he who tries The silver, takes his seat Beside the fire that purifies, Raised to consume the base alloy, 'Tis good to think that well he knows The silver's power to bear The ordeal to which it goes; And, that, with skill and care, He'll take it from the fire, when fit For his own hand to polish it. 'Tis blessedness to feel that he, The piece he has begun, Will not forsake till he can see, But ah! how much of earthly mould, Dark relics of the mine, Purged from the ore, must he behold— Ere in the silver he can trace The first faint semblance to his face! Thou Great Refiner, sit thou by, Moved by thy hand, beneath thine eye, And melted at thy will, Oh may thy work for ever shine, NEWBURYPORT. H. F. G. THE MISSIONARY. Weep not for him!-there is no cause for woe; And from earth's low defilements keep thee back: MRS HEMANS. EVERY thing on earth bears the indelible impress of change, decay and death. Nothing is durable in time. Nothing so brilliant as to be spotless,-nothing so pure as to be stainless. Objects the fairest and loveliest are mutable, and soon become disagreeable; the most beautiful and costly works of art are scarcely completed, ere the work of destruction is commenced; and man, proud man, follows unwillingly, but rapid ly, in the same road to dissolution and death. We admire the rich colours and sweet fragrance of the flowers of spring, yet scarcely are their beautiful tints unveiled, than we are called upon to regret their scattered, faded and scentless leaves, driven by the winds, or crushed beneath our feet. We delight in roving in the greenwood, when the bright sun of May calls forth the waving foliage, and on every branch the gay and happy tenants of the grove are building their nests of down, or listening to the sweet and varying notes of ecstasy and love;-yet how few are the days of summer, and how quickly past!-The chill autumn wind is breathed over the vale, and the foliage is faded, is withered, is dead; and the wild birds, which but yesterday were so blest, seek, in other and fairer climes and skies, that rest which here they cannot possess. And are the boasted enjoyments of man more permanent? We come upon the stage full of bright hopes and brilliant anticipations. Pleasure invites, wealth allures, honour and ambition charm; every path to happiness, that unknown boundary of man's desires, is laid open to us, and the glittering prize seems almost within our reach, when the airy phantoms vanish, the rainbow-coloured bubbles burst, and we find ourselves poor mortals still, weighed down with cares and toils, with afflictions of body and mind, and trembling on the verge of that grave, which is soon to overwhelm us, and all that on earth we can hope or fear. The flowers of spring, it is true, will smile again as sweet and beautiful as ever-the forest will again resume its verdant covering—the song of the wild bird will again awaken its slumbering echoes; -yet, when man dies, when will he return?-when those we love are torn from us by a power that none can resist, may we hope again to meet them here? will they ever awake to the scenes of earth-its life, its hope, its love? Ah! never, never!-when their spring shall arrive, and they burst the cerements of their prison house; when they throw aside the green turf which perhaps for centuries has freshened over the slumbering tenant beneath, the angel of God will have sworn that time shall be no longer. If there is one thing more than another calculated to disgust us with the things of earth, and the evanescent nature of its enjoyments; to throw a chill over our hopes, and sickly paleness over life; nay, I might almost say-and what will not ignorant, short-sighted, presumptuous man dare?-to impeach the goodness of that being who governs all things; it is to see a young person cut down in the morning of life when every |