Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, Whose deeds crowd History's pages, I live to hold communion With all that is divine, To feel there is a union 'Twixt Nature's heart and mine; To profit by affliction, Reap truth from fields of fiction, And fulfil God's grand design. I live to hail that season By gifted ones foretold, When men shall live by reason, I live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my spirit too; For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do. If he keeps the face of the Saviour forever and alway in sight, His toil shall be sweeter than honey, his weaving is sure to be right. And when the work is ended, and the web is turned and shown, He shall hear the voice of the Master; it shall say to him, "Well done!" And the white-winged angels of Heaven, to bear him thence, shall come down; And God shall give him gold for his hire-not coin, but a glowing crown! ANSON G. CHESTER. G. LINNÆUS BANKS. THE TAPESTRY-WEAVERS. 1. LET us take to our hearts a lesson -no braver lesson can be, From the ways of the tapestry-weavers on the other side of the sea. Above their heads the pattern hangs, they study it with care,- The while their fingers deftly move, their eyes are fastened there. They tell this curious thing, besides, of the patient, plodding weaver: He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side ever. It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is loosed and turned, That he sees his real handiwork- that his marvelous skill is learned. Ah, the sight of its delicate beauty, how it pays him for all his cost! No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost, KNEE DEEP. THEY are calling "knee deep! knee deep!" to-night in the marsh below, Down by the bank, where the rank swordgrass and calamus grow; Like an army of silversmiths, forging bells for the northern sprites, And, keeping time to a rhyme, they work thro' the summer nights. Steadily up from their swampy forge, the sparks of the fireflies rise In the pool where the wading lilies make love through half-shut eyes To the whippoorwill who scolds, like a shrew, at the fluffy owl! While the nighthawk shuffles by, like a monk in a velvet cowl, And the bat weaves inky weft, thro' the white starbeams that peep Down through the cypress boughs, where the frogs all sing "knee deep." I have known a song to lead a failing elderly man like me Back thro' the gates of the years, to the scenes that used to be, When the world was fenced from Heaven by one rose hedge, and thro' This bourne the blessed angels looked, and the asphodel odors blew. So these syllables of the song, from the singers among the reeds, Have made me to walk again, knee deep, in the clover meads, And I see the storm king riding the summer clouds in state, With his chariot whip of livid flame, and his thunder billingsgate; And I watch the strong tawny tide, through the flags like a lion creep, Where the frighted inhabitants cling to the rushes, and sing "knee deep." Knee deep I bend in the rippled creek, with buttercup blooms o'erblown, Like the gold on beauty's billowy breast, its color half-hid, half-shown; Knee deep in the saffron marigold flowers, that prank the meadows fair Like a procession of Saxon children, blue-eyed and with yellow hair; Knee deep in the whortleberries, sunbrowned in the sun I stand, THE plain was grassy, wild and bare, An under-roof of doleful gray. And loudly did lament. Some blue peaks in the distance rose, One willow over the river wept, Chasing itself at its own wild will, Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow. III. The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul' Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear; As when a mighty people rejoice With shawms and with cymbals, and harps of gold, ALFRED TENNYSON. RIPE WHEAT. WE bent to-day o'er a coffined form, We touched our own to the clay-cold hands, From life's long labor at rest; And among the blossoms white and sweet, We noted a bunch of golden wheat, Clasped close to the silent breast. The blossoms whispered of fadeless bloom, We knew not what work her hands had found, What rugged places at her feet; What cross was hers, what blackness of night; We saw but the peace, the blossoms white, And the bunch of ripened wheat. As each goes up from the field of earth, God looks for some gathered grain of good, |