That treasured joys of Christmas tide
May with mine hour of gloom abide;

The Christmas carol ring

Deep in my heart, when I would fing;
Each of the twelve good days

Its earnest yield of duteous love and praise,
Ensuring happy months, and hallowing common

ways.

"Wake me again, my mother dear,
That I may hear

The peal of the departing year.
O well I love, the ftep of Time
Should move to that familiar chime:

Fair fall the tones that steep
The Old Year in the dews of fleep,
The New guide softly in

With hopes to sweet sad memories akin!

Long may that soothing cadence ear, heart, con

science win.”

In the dark winter, ere the snow
Had loft its glow,

This melody we learned; and lo!
We hear it now in every breeze
That ftirs on high the summer trees.
We pause and look around-

Where may the lone church-tower be found,
That speaks our tongue so well?
The dim peal in the torrent seems to dwell,
It greets us from afar in Ocean's measured swell.

Perhaps we fit at home, and dream
On some high theme,

And forms, that in low embers gleam,
Come to our twilight Fancy's aid:
Then, wavering as that light and shade,
The breeze will figh and wail,

And up and down its plaintive scale
Range fitfully, and bear

Meet burden to the lowly whispered air,

And ever the sweet bells, that charmed Life's

morn, are there.

The pine-logs on the hearth sometimes
Mimic the chimes,

The while on high the white wreath climbs,
Which seething waters upward fling,

In prison wont to dance and fing,

All to the same low tune.

But most it loves in bowers of June

At will to come and go,

Where like a minster roof the arched boughs fhow, And court the penfive ear of loiterer far below.

Be mine at vesper hour to ftray
Full oft that way,

And when the dreamy sounds decay,
As with the sun the gale dies down,
Then far away, from tower or town,
A true peal let me hear,
In manifold melodious cheer,

Through all the lonely grove

Wafting a fair good-night from His high love, Who ftrews our world with figns from His own world above.

So never with regretful eye

Need we descry

7

crave.

Dark mountains in the evening sky,
Nor on those ears with envy think,
Which nightly from the cataract shrink

In heart-ennobling fear,

And in the rufhing whirlwind hear,

(When from his highland cave

He sweeps unchained over the wintry wave,)
Ever the same deep chords, such as home fancies

save.

Ever the same, yet ever new,
Changed and yet true,

Like the pure heaven's unfailing blue,
Which varies on from hour to hour,
Yet of the same high Love and Power
Tells alway-such may seem

Through life, or waking or in dream,
The echoing Bells that gave

Our childhood welcome to the healing wave:
Such the remembered Word, so mighty then to

Keble.

ST. SYLVAN'S BELL.

Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.-Psalter.

A

FORTNIGHT it was from Whit

suntide,

And a service was said that day,
In a little church, that a good man

built

In the wilderness far away.

A twelvemonth before, and there was not there

Or temple or holy bell;

But the place it was free from holiness
As the soul of the Infidel.

Five thousand years this world is old,
And twice four hundred more,
And that green spot had foreft been
From the eldest days of yore: