Thou center-point of myriad spheres,
Through aged Time's gray round of years!

2. Bright dweller by the unfooted North,
New light hath ever clothed thy face,
Since the high God first launched thee forth
Into the boundless space;

Mountains have from their base been cast,
Earthquakes have opened caverns vast, —
Old Ocean changed its place;

Nations and tribes of star-bright fame
Have perished, thou art still the same!

3. Thy glance is ever bold and bright, -
Thou never weariest in thy task;
What time departs the sable night,
And morn with rosy mask

Glides on through clouds, like hills of snow,
Or, in the noontide's passionate glow,
All earth and ocean bask;

Till westward, down the reddening air
Drops the round sun,- thou still art there!

4. Long wert thou worshiped as a guide
By the bold dwellers on the sea,
Where neither mark nor track abide,-
Changefully eternally!

When o'er them crept the night-hours dark,
Through the wide waste they urged the bark,
By science won from thee,

Till the dark presence of the storm
Smote from their eyes thy beaming form.

5. What ages from yon arctic bed

Hath thy deep-fountained radiance shone!
Nor may that golden flame be dead

So long as Time rolls on;

But still, with clear and steadfast rays,
Emblem that faith by which we gaze
On the Eternal One,-

The beacon by whose light we ride,
Triumphing o'er Life's dangerous tide.

6. O bright and beautiful! in thee

We read God's love- His power, how strong, That through the sky's immensity

Thy giant mass out-flung!

So distant from our rolling world,
That, were thy sphere of beauty hurled
From the resounding throng,

Thousands of years might pass away
Ere thine old realm in darkness lay.

LESSON XCVI

10 LYM' PI AN, pertaining to Olympus, a mountain in Thessaly, the fabled abode of the gods.

2 TITANS, giants of ancient mythology, enormous in size and strength.

3 SI'NA I, a mountain in the peninsula of Arabia, from the summit of which God published his law to the Israelites.

4

CAL VA RY, the name given to a slight elevation north of the ancient city of Jerusalem, perhaps half a mile distant from the temple, and noted as the place of the crucifixion of Christ.

* A POC A LYPTIC, pertaining to the Revelation of St. John, in Patmos, near the close of the first century.

MOUNTAINS.

E. M. MORSE.

Who laid your awful foundations in the central fires, and piled your rocks and snow-capped summits among the clouds? Who placed you in the gardens of the world, like noble altars, on which to offer the sacrificial gifts of many nations? Who reared your rocky walls in the barren desert, like towering pyramids, like monumental mounds, like giants' graves, like dismantled piles of royal ruins, telling a mournful tale of glory, once bright, but now fled forever, as flee the dreams of a midsummer's night? Who gave you a home in the islands of the sea, — those emeralds that gleam among the waves, those stars of ocean that mock the beauty of the stars of

MOUNTAINS! who was your Builder?

night?

It was GOD! He laid your

2. Mountains! I know who built you. His name is written on your foreheads. corner-stones on that glorious morning when the orchestra of Heaven sounded the anthem of creation. He clothed your high, imperial forms in royal robes. He gave you a snowy garment, and wove for you a cloudy vail of crimson and gold. He crowned you with a diadem of icy jewels; pearls from the arctic seas; gems from the frosty pole. Mountains! ye are glorious. Ye stretch your granite arms away toward the vales of the undiscovered: ye have a longing for immortality.

3. But, Mountains! ye long in vain. I called you glorious, and truly ye are; but your glory is like that of the starry heavens, it shall pass away at the trumpet-blast of the angel of the Most High. And yet ye are worthy Ye were the lovers of

of a high and eloquent eulogium.

the daughters of the gods; ye are the lovers of the daugh

ters of Liberty and Religion now; and in your old and feeble age the children of the skies shall honor your bald heads. The clouds of heaven-those shadows of Olympian1 power, those spectral phantoms of dead Titans 2 kiss your summits, as guardian angels kiss the brow of infant nobleness. On your sacred rocks I see the footprints of the Creator; I see the blazing fires of Sinai,3 and hear its awful voice; I see the tears of Calvary, and listen to its mighty groans.

4. Mountains! ye are proud and haughty things. Ye hurl defiance at the storm, the lightning, and the wind; ye look down with deep disdain upon the thunder-cloud; ye scorn the devastating tempest; ye despise the works of puny man; ye shake your rock-ribbed sides with giant laughter, when the great earthquake passes by. Ye stand as giant sentinels, and seem to say to the boisterous billows,—“Thus far shalt thou come, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!"

5. Mountains! ye are growing old.. Your ribs of granite are getting weak and rotten; your muscles are losing their fatness; your hoarse voices are heard only at distant intervals; your volcanic heart throbs feebly; and your lava-blood is thickening, as the winters of many ages gather their chilling snows around your venerable forms. The brazen sunlight laughs in your old and wrinkled faces ; the pitying moonlight nestles in your hoary locks; and the silvery starlight rests upon you like the halo of inspiration that crowned the heads of dying patriarchs and prophets. Mountains! ye must die. Old Father Time, that sexton of earth, has dug you a deep, dark tomb; and in silence shall sleep after sea and shore shall have been pressed by the feet of the apocalyptic angel, through the long watches of an eternal night.

ye

5

1.

PROUD

LESSON XCVII.

THE ALPS.

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

ROUD monuments of God! sublime ye stand
Among the wonders of His mighty hand;

With summits soaring in the upper sky,

Where the broad day looks down with burning eye;
Where gorgeous clouds in solemn pomp repose,
Flinging rich shadows on eternal snows:
Piles of triumphant dust, ye stand alone,
And hold, in kingly state, a peerless throne!

2. Like olden conquerors, on high ye rear
The regal ensign and the glittering spear:
Round icy spires the mists, in wreaths unrolled,
Float ever near, in purple or in gold;
And voiceful torrents, sternly rolling there,
Fill with wild music the unpillared air.

What garden or what hall, on earth beneath,

Thrills to such tones as o'er the mountains breathe?

3. There, through long ages past, those summits shone
When morning radiance on their state was thrown;
There, when the summer-day's career was done,
Played the last glory of the sinking sun;
There, sprinkling luster o'er the cataract's shade,
The chastened moon her glittering rainbow made;
And, blent with pictured stars, her luster lay
Where to still vales the free streams leaped away.

4. Where are the thronging hosts of other days,
Whose banners floated o'er the Alpine ways;