There's a tumult of joy
O'er the wonderful birth,
For the virgin's sweet boy

Is the Lord of the earth,

Ay! the star rains its fire and the Beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King!

In the light of that star
Lie the ages impearled;
And that song from afar

Has swept over the world.

Every hearth is a flame, and the Beautiful sing
In the homes of the nations that Jesus is King.

We rejoice in the light,

And we echo the song

That comes down through the night

From the heavenly throng.

Ay! we shout to the lovely evangel they bring,

And we greet in his cradle our Saviour and King!

THE MONTH OF MARS.

OCTOBER.

I

WOULD not die in May:

When orchards drift with bloom of white, like billows

on the deep,

And whispers from the lilac bush across my senses

sweep,

That 'mind me of a girl I knew, when life was always

May,

Who filled my nights with starry hopes that faded out

by day,

When time is full of wedding days, and nests of robins

brim,

Till overflows their wicker sides the old familiar hymn. The window brightens like an eye, the cottage door swings wide,

The boys come homeward one by one, and bring a smiling bride.

The fire-fly shows her signal light, the partridge beats his drum,

And all the world gives promise of something sweet to

come.

Ah! who would die on such a day?

Ah! who would die in May?

I would not die in June:

When looking up with faces quaint, the pansies grace the sod;

And looking down, the willows see their doubles in the flood.
When, blessing God, we breathe again the roses in the air,
And lilies light the fields along with their immortal wear,
As once they lit the sermon of the Saviour on the mount,
And glorified the story they evermore recount.
Through pastures green the flocks of God go trooping
one by one,

And turn their golden fleeces round to dry them in the sun.
When, calm as Galilee, the grain is rippling in the wind,
And nothing dying anywhere but something that is sinned.
Ah! who would die in life's own noon?
Ah! who would die in June?

But when October comes,

And poplars drift their leafage down in flakes of gold

below,

And beeches burn like twilight fires, that used to tell of

snow,

And maples bursting into flame, set all the hills afire, And summer, from the evergreens, sees paradise draw

nigher.

A thousand sunsets all at once distill like Hermon's dew, And linger on the waiting woods, and stain them through and through,

As if all earth had blossomed out one grand Corinthian flower,

To crown Time's graceful capital for just one gorgeous

hour!

They strike their colors to the king of all the stately throng

He comes in pomp, October! To him all times belong: The frost is on his sandals, but the flush is on his cheeks, September sheaves are in his arms; June voices, when he speaks;

The elms lit bravely like a torch within a Grecian hand, See where they light the monarch on through all the

splendid land!

The sun puts on a human look behind the hazy fold,
The mid-year moon of silver is stuck anew in gold,

In honor of the very day that Moses saw of old;

For in the burning bush that blazed as quenchless as a sword,

The Old Lieutenant first beheld October and the Lord! Ah! then October let it be,

I'll claim my dying day for thee!

BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR.

THE

THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM.

HE twenty-third psalm is the nightingale of the psalms. It is small, of a homely feather, singing shyly out of obscurity, but oh, it has filled the air of the

whole world with melodious joy, greater than the heart can conceive. Blessed be the day on which that psalm was born.

What would you say of a pilgrim commissioned of God to travel up and down the earth, singing a strange melody, which, when one heard, caused him to forget whatever sorrow he had? And so the singing angel goes on his way through all lands, singing in the language of every nation, driving away trouble by the pulses of the air which his tongue moves with divine power. Behold just such an one! This pilgrim God has sent to speak in every language on the globe. It has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world. It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows, than there are sands on the sea-shore. It has comforted the noble host of the poor. It has sung courage to the army of the disappointed. It has poured balm and consolation into the heart of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness. Dying soldiers have died easier as it was read to them; ghastly hospitals have been illumined; it has visited the prisoner and broken his chains, and like Peter's angel, led him forth in imagination, and sung him back to his home again. It has made the dying Christian slave freer than his master; and consoled those whom, dying, he left behind mourning, not so much that he was gone as because they were left behind, and could not go too. Nor is its work done. It will go singing to your chil dren, and my children, and to their children, through all the generations of time; nor will it fold its wings till the last pilgrim is safe, and time ended; and then it shall fly back to the bosom of God whence it issued, and sound on, and on, mingled with all those

sounds of celestial joy which make heaven musical forever.-HENRY WARD BEECHER.

WHERE SHALL THE BABY'S DIMPLE BE?

OVER

VER the cradle the mother hung,
Softly crooning a slumber song;
And these were the simple words she
All the evening long :

sung,

"Cheek or chin, or knuckle or knee,
Where shall the baby's dimple be?
Where shall the angel's finger rest
When he comes down to the baby's nest?
Where shall the angel's touch remain
When he awakens my babe again?"

Still as she bent and sang so low,

A murmur into her music broke;

And she paused to hear, for she could but know
The baby's angel spoke.

"Cheek or chin, or knuckle or knee,

Where shall the baby's dimple be?

Where shall my finger fall and rest
When I come down to the baby's nest?
Where shall my finger's touch remain
When I awaken your babe again?"

Silent the mother sat, and dwelt

Long in the sweet delay of choice;
And then by her baby's side she knelt,
And sang with pleasant voice;