I questioned not her peace with God, For I've seen men who meant not ill While agonizing judgments hung I could but say, with faltering voice "And though thou walk the shadowy vale She knew it well, and knew yet more My deepest hope, though unexprest, The hope that God's appointed sleep But heightens ravishment with rest. My children, living flowers, shall come And strew with seed this grave of thine, And bid the blushing growths of Spring Thy dreary painted cross entwine. Thus Faith, cast out of barren creeds, Shall rest in emblems of her own; Beauty still springing from Decay, The cross-wood budding to the crown. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in bur nished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat: O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on., H. D. THOREAU. IF with light head erect I sing, source. But if with bended neck I grope, Making my soul accomplice there They have builded him an altar in the I hearing get, who had but ears, evening dews and damps; And sight, who had but eyes before; It is nothing now, ELIZABETH LLOYD HOWELL. When heaven is opening on my sight [U. S. A.] MILTON'S PRAYER IN BLINDNESS. I AM old and blind! less eyes? When airs from paradise refresh my brow, The earth in darkness lies. In a purer clime Men point at me as smitten by God's My being fills with rapture, frown; thought waves of Roll in upon my spirit, - strains sublime Break over me unsought. Give me my lyre! I feel the stirrings of a gift divine: Within my bosom glows unearthly fire, Lit by no skill of mine. C. F. ALEXANDER. THE BURIAL OF MOSES. By Nebo's lonely mountain And no man knows that sepulchre, For the angels of God upturned the sod, That was the grandest funeral And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek Noiselessly as the spring-time Perchance the bald old eagle O lonely grave in Moab's land! O dark Beth-Peor's hill! Speak to these curious hearts of ours, And teach them to be still. God hath his mysteries of grace, For beast and bird have seen and heard Ways that we cannot tell; That which man knoweth not. He hides them deep, like the hidden |