HYMN.

3

The heavens, O Lord! thy power proclaim,
And the earth echoes back thy name;
Ten thousand voices speak thy might,
And day to day, and night to night,
Utter thy praise—thou Lord above!
Thy praise—thy glory—and thy love.
All things I see, or hear, or feel,
Thy wisdom, goodness, power reveal.
The silent crescent hung on high,
So calmly sailing through the sky;
The lowliest flower that lights the dells;
The lightest wave the stream that swells-
The breeze that o'er the garden plays;
The farthest planet's glimmering rays;
The dew upon the distant hill;
The vapors that the valley fill ;
The grove's untutor'd harmony-
All speak, and loudly speak of Thee.
Thy name, thy glories, they rehearse,
Great Spirit of the universe;
Sense of all sense, and soul of soul,
Nought is too vast for thy control;
The meanest and the mightiest share
Alike thy kindness and thy care.
Beneath thy all-directing nod,
Both worlds and worms are equal, God !

Thy hand the comet's orbit drew,
And lighted yonder glow-worm, too ;
Thou didst the dome of heaven build up,
And form’dst yon snowdrop's silver cup,
And nature, with its countless throng,
And sun, and moon, and planet's song,
And every flower that light receives,
And every dew that tips the leaves,
And every murmur of the sea-
Tunes its sweet voice to worship Thee.

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

GROUP after group are gathering—such as prest

Once to their Savior's arms, and gently laid Their cherub heads upon his shielding breast,

Though sterner souls the fond approach forbade ;Group after group glide on with noiseless tread,

And round Jehovah's sacred altar meet, Where holy thoughts in infant hearts are bred,

And holy words their ruby lips repeat, Oft with a chasten'd glance, in modulation sweet. Y some there are, upon whose childish brows

Wan poverty hath done the work of care ; Look up, ye sad ones! 't is your Father's house

Beneath whose consecrated dome you are ; More gorgeous robes ye see, and trappings rare,

And watch the gaudier forms that gaily move, And deem, perchance, mistaken as you are,

The “coat of many colors” proves His love, Whose sign is in the heart

, and whose reward above. And ye, blest laborers in this humble sphere,

To deeds of saint-like charity inclined, Who from your cells of meditation dear

Come forth to guide the weak, untụtor'd mindYet ask no payment, save one smile refined

Of grateful love—one tear of contrite pain !
Meekly ye forfeit to your mission kind

The rest of earthly Sabbaths.--Be your gain
A sabbath without end, ʼmid yon celestial plain.

BETTER MOMENTS.

My mother's voice! how often creep

Its accents o'er my lonely hours !
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,

Or dew to the unconscious flowers.
I can forget her melting prayer

While leaping pulses madly fly;
But in the still, unbroken air

Her gentle tones come stealing by,
And years, and sin, and manhood flee,
And leave me at my mother's knee.
The book of nature, and the print
Of beauty on the whispering sea,
Give aye to me some lineament

Of what I have been taught to be.
My heart is harder, and perhaps

My manliness hath drunk up tears,

And there's a mildew in the lapse

Of a few miserable years,
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.
I have been out at eventide

Beneath a moonlit sky of spring,
When earth was garnish'd like a bride,

And night had on her silver wingWhen bursting leaves and diamond grass,

And waters leaping to the light, And all that make the pulses pass

With wilder fleetness, throng'd the night; When all was beauty—then have I,

With friends on whom my love is flung, Like myrrh on winds of Araby,

Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung. And when the beauteous spirit there

Flung over me its golden chain, My mother's voice came on the air,

Like the light dropping of the rain, Shower'd on me from some silver star:

Then, as on childhood's bended knee,
I've pour'd her low and fervent prayer,

That our eternity might be
To rise in heaven like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light.

I have been on the dewy hills,

When night was stealing from the dawn, And mist was on the waking rills,

And tints were delicately drawn In the gray east-when birds were waking

With a slow murmur in the trees,
And melody by fits was breaking

Upon the whisper of the breeze,
And this when I was forth, perchance,
As a worn reveller from the dance-

And when the sun sprang gloriously
And freely up, and hill and river

Were catching upon wave and tree
The subtile arrows from his quiver-

I say a voice has thrilled me then,
Heard on the still and rushing light,

Or, creeping from the silent glen
Like words from the departing night,

Hath stricken me, and I have press'd
On the wet grass my fever'd brow,

And pouring forth the earliest,
First prayer, with which I learn’d to bow,

Have felt my mother's spirit rush
Upon me as in by-past years,

And yielding to the blessed gush
Of my ungovernable tears,

Have risen up—the gay, the wild-
As humble as a very child.

TO A FRIEND,

WHO COMPLAINED THAT SHE HAD NOT A HOME.

SAD and slow was the wanderer's tread,
As o'er the lengthen'd way she sped;
And often she cast a wishful eye
On the summer bower as she loiter'd by;