That worship's deeper meaning lies

In mercy, and not sacrifice;

Not proud humilities of sense

And posturing of obedience,

But love's unforced obedience;

That Book and Church and Day are given For man, now God-for earth, not heaven,

The blessed means the holiest ends,

Not masters, but benignant friends,

That the dear Christ dwells not afar,
The king of some remoter star,
But flamed o'er all the thronging host
The baptism of the Holy Ghost;
Heart answers heart; in one desire

The blending lines of prayer aspire;
'Where in my name name meet two or three,'
Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be.'"

-John Greenleaf Whittier.

WAS early day, and sunlight streamed

Soft through a quiet room,

That hushed, but not forsaken, seemed

Still, but with naught of gloom.
For there, serene in happy age,
Whose hopes is from above,

A father communed with the page
Of heaven's recorded love.

Pure fell the beam, and meekly bright,
On his gray holy hair,

And touched the page with tenderest light,

As if its shrine were there!

But oh! that patriarch's aspect shone
With something lovelier far-

A radiance all the spirit's own,
Caught not from sun or star.

Some word of life e'en then had met

His calm benignant eye;

Some ancient promise breathing yet

Of immortality!

Some martyr's prayer, wherein the glow
Of quenchless faith survives:
While every feature said "I know
That my Redeemer lives!"

And silent stood his children by
Hushing their very breath,
Before the solemn sanctity

Of thoughts o'ersweeping death.
Silent-yet did not each young breast
With love and reverence melt?
Oh! blest be those fair girls, and blest
That home where God is felt!

-Felicia Dorothea Hemans.

I

HEARD the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-
From those deep cisterns flow.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,

And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like, I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

'CATTER the germs of the beautiful,

By the wayside let them fall,

That the rose may spring by the cottage gate,
And the vine on the garden wall;
Cover the rough and the rude of earth

With a veil of leaves and flowers,

And mark with the opening bud and cup

The march of summer hours!

Scatter the germs of the beautiful

In the holy shrine of home;

Let the pure, and the fair, and the graceful there

In the loveliest lustre come.

Leave not a trace of deformity

In the temple of the heart,

But gather about its hearth the gems

Of nature and of art!

Scatter the germs of the beautiful

In the temples of our God-
The God who starred the uplifted sky,
And flowered the trampled sod!
When He built a temple for himself,
And a home for His priestly race,
He reared each arm in symmetry;
And covered each line in grace.

Scatter the germs of the beautiful

In the depths of the human soul!

They shall bud and blossom and bear the fruit, While the endless ages roll;

Plant with the flowers of charity

The portals of the tomb,
And fair and pure about thy path
In Paradise shall bloom.

An aged man with grave, but gentle look-
His silence sweet with sounds

With which the simple-hearted spring abounds; Lowing of cattle from the abbey grounds, Chirping of insect, and the building rook Mingled like murmurs of a dreaming shell; Quaint tracery of bird, and branch, and brook,

Flitting across the pages of his book,
Until the very words a freshness took-
Deep in his cell

Sat the Monk Gabriel.

In his book he read

The words the Master to His dear ones said: "A little while and ye

Shall see,

Shall gaze on Me;

A little while again,

Ye shall not see Me then."

A little while!

The monk looked up-a smile

Making his visage brilliant, liquid-eyed:

Thou who gracious art

Unto the poor of heart,
O blessed Christ!" he cried,

"Great is the misery
Of mine iniquity;

But would I now might see,

Might feast on Thee!"

-The blood with sudden start,

Nigh rent his veins apart

(Oh, condescension of the Crucified:) In all the brilliancy

Of His humanity

The Christ stood by his side!

Pure as the early lily was his skin,
His cheek out-blushed the rose,
His lips the glows

Of autumn sunset on eternal snows;
And His deep eyes within,

Such nameless beauties, wondrous glories dwelt. The monk in speechless adoration knelt.

In each fair hand, in each fair foot there shone
The peerless stars He took from Calvary;
Around his brows in tenderest lucency

The thorn marks lingered like the flash of dawn;
And from the opening in his side there rilled
A light so dazzling that all the room was filled
With heaven; and transfigured in his place,
His very breathing stilled,
The friar held his robes before his face,

And heard the angels singing!

'Twas but a moment-then, upon the spell Of this sweet presence, lo! a something broke; A something trembling, in the belfry woke, A shower of metal music flinging O'er wold and moat, o'er park and lake and fell,

THE

HE groves were God's first temples. learned

Ere man

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them-ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems-in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences,
That, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks, that high in heaven,

Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn-thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in his ear.

O,

MAY I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence; live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

Of miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order, that controls,
With growing sway, the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

That watched to ease the burden of the world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better,-saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love,-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread forever.

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious For us, who strive to follow.

May I reach

That purest heaven,-be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense !
So shall I join the choir invisible,

Whose music is the gladness of the world.
-Marion Evans Lewes Cross (George Eliot.)