What are these frowns, and penal ways

With rebel hand and tongue?

True tokens of the heart's amaze,

Where waits beside the door the sacred throng,
By sentence heard in Heaven,

Of sin-retaining power, out of the Presence driven :

Driven for awhile: and O! if yet
The scornful brow they bend,

The saintly Thrones are duly set,

The doom prepar'd, that without hope or end

The Temple Roof will draw

Down on the irreverent head, there lingering without

awe.

7.

DISRESPECT TO ELDERS.

"And he went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald-head; go up, thou bald-head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord: and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two chil dren of them. And he went from thence to mount Carmel."

THE Powers of Ill have mysteries of their own,
Their sacramental signs and prayers,

Their choral chants in many a winning tone,

Their watchwords, seals, processions, known Far off to friend and foe: their lights and perfum'd airs.

And even as men, where warring hosts abide,

By faint and silent tokens learn

At distance whom to trust, from whom to hide,
So round us set on every side

Th' aerial sentinels our good and ill discern.

The lawless wish, the unaverted eye,

Are as a taint upon the breeze,

To lure foul spirits: haughty brows and high

Are signals to invite him nigh,

Whose onset ever Saints await on bended knees.

Him in some thievish corner of the street
Full often lurking low we trace,

When sullen lips our kindly glances meet,

And looks, that pastoral eyes should greet, As flowers the morn, fall coldly, as on empty space.

His poisonous whisper hath been there, be sure,
Where childhood's simple courtesies

Are scorn'd so trains he up his school impure,
So may his nursery task inure

The hearts that by and by against the Church shall rise.

Open their eyes, good Lord, that they may know

Whose edicts they so dearly hold,

Making Thy rites a revel and a show,

Where the rude world may come and go,

To sit at ease, and judge the Saints and Seers of old.

The stubborn knees with holy trembling smite,

Which bow not at Thine awful Name.

Pour from Thine Altar Thine own glorious Light,

Winning the world-enamour'd sight

To turn and see which way the healing radiance came.

O may our fallen land, though late, unlearn
Her reckless unbelieving heart,

And in the Gifts, sweet as from Aaron's urn,
And in the pure white Robe, discern
Signs lingering, faint and few, ere the last Saint depart.

O grant us Thy good Angel, evermore

To wait, with unseen scourge in hand,

On the Church path, and by the low school door.
Write in young hearts Thy reverend lore,

Nor be our christen'd babes as Bethel's lawless band.

Perhaps among the wailing matrons there

Was one who to her child had taught

The ways of scorn, breathing the poison'd air
Into that bosom fresh and fair

Which from her own drew life.-Alas! too well it wrought.

Now self-accusing by the drear wood-side

She ranges where th' avengers came,
In dreams of penance wandering wild and wide.
But he, the Healer and the Guide,

To Carmel top is gone, far from our woe and shame.

Now from his lips the judgment word hath past,
The lightning from his awful brow:

Low on his knees in some bleak cavern cast,
His prayers go up o'er ocean vast

For those whom he hath doom'd: he is their Patron now.

And our Elisha-fails He on the Mount

To plead, His holy ones to pray

For rebels and profane ?-O who may count
The drops from that eternal Fount

Of heavenly Intercession, welling night and day?

Ye fragrant showers, O were it not for you,
How could we breathe the parched air
Of the world's freedom, feverish and untrue,

Withering each soft and kindly hue

Even in young hearts? but ye spring-weather cherish there.