When

age

shall come, ah, blessed age!

If in its lengthening shade,

When life grows faint, and earthly lights
Recede, and sink, and fade, --

Ah, blessed age! if then heaven's light
Dawns on the closing eye,

And faith unto the call of God
Can answer, Here am I!

TO MY GUARDIAN ANGEL.

(FOR CHILDREN.)

FABER.

DEAR angel! ever at my side,
How loving must thou be,
To leave thy home in heaven to guard
A little child like me!

Thy beautiful and shining face
I see not, though so near;

The sweetness of thy soft, low voice.
I am too deaf to hear.

I cannot feel thee touch my hand

With pressure light and mild,

LINES TO D. G. T. OF SHERWOOD. 117

To check me, as my mother did
When I was but a child.

But I have felt thee in my thoughts
Fighting with sin for me;

And when my heart loves God, perhaps
The sweetness is from thee.

And when, dear spirit, I kneel down
Morning and night to prayer,
Something there is within my heart
Which tells me thou art there.

And thou in life's last hour wilt bring
A fresh supply of grace,
And afterwards wilt let me kiss

Thy beautiful, bright face.

LINES TO D. G. T. OF SHERWOOD.

MRS. M. G. HORSFORD.

BLESSINGS on thee, noble boy!
With thy sunny eyes of blue,
Speaking in their cloudless depths
Of a spirit pure and true.

In thy thoughtful look and calm,

In thy forehead broad and high, We have seemed to meet again

One whose home is in the sky.

Thou to earth art still a stranger,
To life's tumult and unrest;
Angel-visitants alone

Stir the fountains in thy breast.

Thou hast yet no Past to shadow
With a fear thy Future's light,
And the present spreads before thee
Boundless as the infinite.

But each passing hour must waken
Energies that slumber now,
Manhood with its fire and action
Stamp that fair, unfurrowed brow.

Into life's sublime arena,

Opening through the world's broad mart,

Bear thy mother's gentle spirit,

And her kind and loving heart.

With exalted hope and purpose,
To the great and good aspire;
Downward, in unsullied glory
Hand the honor of thy sire.

LINES WRITTEN IN A PRAYER-BOOK.

With that love for truth and justice

After annals shall declare

Highest proof of moral greatness,
Nobly live and nobly dare.

Cloudless pass thine infant days;

Childhood bring thee naught but joy;
Manhood, thought and dignity :

Blessings on thee, noble boy!

119

WRITTEN IN A PRAYER-BOOK GIVEN TO MY DAUGHTER.

BERNARD BARTON.

My creed requires no form of prayer;
Yet would I not condemn

Those who adopt with pious care

Their use as aids to them.

One God hath fashioned them and me;

One Spirit is our guide;

For each, alike, upon the tree

One common Saviour died!

Each the same trumpet-call shall wake,
To face one judgment-seat;
God give us grace, for Jesus' sake,

In the same heaven to meet!

THE SOUL.

R. C. WATERSTON.

WHY was this ponderous planet hung in air, With grandeur robed, and crowned with beauty

fair?

Hear ye the voice which whispers from afar,
Speaks in each breeze, is echoed from each star!
For Man the myriad wheels of Nature roll;
He is the central sun, the Living Soul.

View the glad earth, her oceans and her rills, Her verdant valleys and her vine-clad hills; Behold with rapture all that meets thy sight, Beaming with love, and touched with heavenly light;

But know that earth's magnificence combined, Shrinks to a point, when balanced with the MIND!

Let thy free thought go forth, and nobly dare To pierce high heaven, and view each splendor there,

Draw the bright curtain from creation's face,

And, trembling, gaze through boundless fields of

space;

Yet feel that those vast scenes before thee brought Are not so wondrous as thy Power of Thought!