Turneth the page of Jesus, and doth read With toil, perchance, that the trim school-boy mocks,

Counting him in his arrogance a fool;

Yet shall this poor, wayfaring man lie down
With such a hope as thou couldst never teach
Thy kinglike sages; yea, a hope that plucks
The sting from death-the victory from the grave.
L. H. S.

HARTFORD, CONN.

ETERNITY OF GOD.

And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thy hands:

They shall perish, but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old, as doth a garment;

And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. HEB. I. 10-12.

THE deep foundations of the earth are thine,
Laid by thy hands, Almighty, when of old
From ancient chaos order rose, and light

From darkness, beauty from a shapeless mass.
A glorious orb from its Creator's hands

It came, in light and loveliness arrayed,

Crowned with green emerald mounts, tinted with gold,

And wearing as a robe the silver sea,
Seeded with jewels of resplendent isles.

The awful heavens are thiné: the liquid sun
That heaves his fiery waves beneath thy eye—
The ocean-fount of all the streams of light,
That pour their beamy treasures through the wide,
Illimitable ether, watering with their rays

The wide spread soil, to where the burning sands
Of dark immensity eternal barriers throw
Against the flowing of their crystal streams,
Was from the Godhead's urn of glory poured.

The stars are thine: thy charactery grand,
In which, upon the page of awful heaven,
Thy hand has traced, in radiant lines, thy grace,
Thy glory, thy magnificence and power,

For eye of man and angel to behold,

And read and gaze on, worship and adore.

These shall grow old, though solid earth with years

Shall see her sapless body shrivel up,

And her gray mountains crumble piecemeal down,
Like crypt and pyramid, to primal dust.

The sea shall labour on his hoary head,
Shall wave his silver tresses, white with years;
The deep pulsations of his mighty heart,

That bids the blood-like fluid circulate
Through every fibre of the earth, shall cease,
And the eternal heavens, in whose bright folds,
As in a starry vesture, thou art girt,
Shall lose their lustre and grow old with time,
And as a wornout garment thou shalt fold
Their faded glories, and they shall be changed
For vesture bright, immortal as thyself.

Yea, the eternal heavens, on whose blue page
Thy glory and magnificence are traced,
With age shall tarnish, and shall be rolled up
As parchment scrolls of abrogated acts,
And be deposited in deathless urns,
Amid the archives of the mighty God.
THOU art the same: thy years shall
In glory bright, when every star and sun
Have lost their radiance and expired in night;
Immortal all when time and slow decay
Imprint their ravages on Nature's face,
Triumphantly secure when from the tower
Of highest Heaven's imperial citadel,
The bell of Nature's dissolution toll,

never fail

And sun, and star, and planet be dissolved,

And the wide drapery of darkness hang
A gloomy pall of sable mourning round
Dead Nature, in the grave of chaos laid.

d

REISTERTOWN, MD.

N. C. B.