INVOCATION.

SPIRITS Who hover near me,

Beat back the Tempter,

ye whose wings

whose sweet presence brings

Calm, gentle feelings, wishes pure and kind,

An eye for all God's beauty, and a mind
Open to all his voices, still be nigh,

When the Great Mystery its broad shadow flings
Over earth's firmest visions, till they fly

Like phantoms of the night, and teach me how to die.

When my breath faileth, as the summer air
Fainteth at evening, - when my heart, whose care
Jesus hath lightened, throbs, stops, throbs again,
Then, slowly sinking, ceases without pain

Its noiseless, voiceless labors, still be nigh;
Let not the form of ghastly Death be there,
But to my clouded, yet clear-seeing eye

Reveal your forms of light, and make me love to die.

The pinions of the Dark and Dreaded One
Shall not, then, fan my temples, when 't is done
This hard-fought fight; your fingers shall untie
My earthward bonds; your voices silently
Whisper, "Come home, your course is but begun
And in your arms borne upward, far on high,
With mind and heart tuned to heaven's harmony,
I shall know all, love all, and find 't is Life to die.
FLAT ROCK, June 9th, 1845.

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SPIRITUAL PRESENCE.

It is a beautiful belief,

When ended our career,
That it will be our ministry
To watch o'er others here;

To lend a moral to the flower;
Breathe wisdom on the wind;
To hold commune, at night's pure noon,
With the imprisoned mind;

To bid the mourners cease to mourn,
The trembling be forgiven;
To bear away from ills of clay
The infant, to its heaven.

1833.

Ah! when delight was found in life,

And joy in every breath,

I cannot tell how terrible

The mystery of death.

But now the past is bright to me,
And all the future clear ;
For 't is my faith, that after death
I still shall linger here.

MELANCTHON AND LUTHER.

WHEN Luther left his hiding-place at the castle of the Wartburg, and went up for a season to visit his little flock at the University, he stayed with Melancthon at the house of Amsdorff, a brother of the priest of that name.

It was an old house even then, overrun with useless passages, dark and deep stairways, and doors that led nowhere; and though the rooms which Philip occupied were in front of the building, and by far the best in it, yet were there no less than eight doors leading from them, two only of which were ever used. As for the rest, as they would not lock, Philip had placed some broad-backed chairs against them, and sat down careless whither they led.

There were no residents in the old castle but Melancthon and his young wife, old Amsdorff and a single daughter, Catherine, who went singing about among the dusty by-ways of the dwelling, with all the joyousness proper to a Saxon lassie of sixteen. Philip, demure as he was, loved a pretty girl dearly, though the more he liked, the more he feared her; and the bright, flowing curls and swimming blue eyes of the maiden that met him now and then, as he came from his lectures, were by no means powerless, so that ere long he was as much afraid to go home as if he thought an enemy lay in wait for him; and as she, the more they met, grew the more familiar, every day added to his trouble, until at