How pleasant seem the moments now, as up their shadows come,

Spent in that domicil which wore the sacred name of

home,

How in the vista years have made, they shine with mellowed light,

To which meridian bliss has nought so beautiful and bright!

How happy were those fireside hours—how happy summer's walk,

When listening to my father's words or joining in the talk;

How passed like dreams those early hours, till down upon us burst

The avalanche of grief, and laid our pleasures in the dust!

They tell of loss, but who can tell how thorough is the stroke

By which the tie of sire and son in death's forever

broke?

They tell of Time!

-though he may heal the heart

that's wounded sore,

The household bliss thus blighted, Time! canst thou again restore?

Yet if this spot recals the dead, and brings from memory's leaf

A sentence wrote in bitterness, of raptures, bright and

brief,

I would not shun it, nor would lose the moral it will give,

To teach me by the withered past, for better hopes to live.

And though to warn of future wo, or whisper future bliss,

One comes not from the spirit world, a witness unto

this,

Yet from memorials of his dust, 'tis wholesome thus to learn

And print upon our thought the state to which we

must return.

Wherever then my pilgrimage in coming days shall be, My frequent visions, favorite ground! shall backward glance to thee;

The holy dead, the bygone hours, the precepts early given,

Shall sweetly soothe and influence my homeward way

to heaven.

1837.

PURITY.

Oh, glorious THOU! thy throne of power

Could not remain one single hour,
Were not its deep foundations laid

On laws of holiness, obeyed.

The heavens that look upon this globe,
The stars that glitter on their robe,
Yea, the battalions, blest and bright
Of God, are spotted in his sight.

What, then, is man, who drinks up sin?
All stains without, all wounds within-
Whose guilt embitters every stream
That, as it shines, should blessings beam.

Oh, from the tree which shadows heaven,
Let some benignant branch be given;
At Marah, be again revealed,

And, Lord! the fountain shall be healed.

THE FUTURE.

My God, I would not long to see
My fate with curious eyes;

What gloomy lines are writ for me,

Or what bright scenes may rise.- Watts.

IF in Thy book, within whose lids is sealed The checkered fates of mortals, unrevealed, Is deeply graven by the eternal pen,

Among the unaltered weal and wo of men, My future story, or in sombre lines,

Along which no kind ray of gladness shines,

Or in the characters that brightly tell
Around me Hope has woven fairy spell,
And on my future path—unlike the past —
The sunshine of enjoyment shall be cast-
And on that page I dare believe 'tis seen
Still shall the thought ne'er trouble me. Serene,
Indifferent, even, will I be, for Thou,

O God, hast been, and still, I trust, art now
And ever will be mine. What need I more?
To me what boots it that the future store
Of good, or ill, is unrevealed? I must,
Were all this known, but make my God my trust.
And this I'll do, unknowing His intent,

And praise Him still, till life's poor sand is spent,—
Till I, with others, on the plains above,

Shall, wondering, spell out all His ways of love;
And oh, to read in lines of glory, then,
How God, in all, is justified to men!

BETHESDA.*

THE House of Mercy-sacred pool-
Whose gracious wave was wont to cure,
Beneath the Great Physician's rule,

The lame, blind, halt, and withered poor,

* John, chap. v.

Is theme of sweet instruction, telling
That errand angels make their dwelling
With man; untiring spirits they,
Who, or to bide, or fly, or roam,
With willing wings their Lord obey
On earth, as in their starry home.

Bethesda in the lapse of years

Who may recount the groans and tears,
The hopes dashed down, the keen despair -
All that the sickened heart can wear
Of human ill, that by thy side

Have clustered, mocking human pride ?
Or of the thousands who have sat

Thus by thy well, in hope, how few
Seizing the precious moment that

Should heal, stepped in and found it true! And what's the world we tread, but one Bethesda, where the heirs of pain Are watchers-where the lost, undone, Expecting, wait, and wait in vain — Where multitudes lose Hope's sweet power, To one that finds the Angel's hour!

And one, among that waiting crowd,
For two-score years has, patient, bowed
Beneath his suff'rings. Time has past —
His youthful locks of glossy jet
Have whitened by these waters, yet
Is he unhealed. His manly cheek
Is scarred with lines that old age speak;