HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR

THE sad and solemn Night

Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they,
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.

Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth

ΙΟ

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Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide find thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls,

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun,
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud,

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thine unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

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And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,

That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

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THE LAPSE OF TIME

LAMENT who will, in fruitless tears,

The speed with which our moments fly;
I sigh not over vanished years,

But watch the years that hasten by.

Look, how they come,-a mingled crowd
Of bright and dark, but rapid days;
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
The wide world changes as I gaze.

What! grieve that time has brought so soon
The sober age of manhood on ?

As idly might I weep at noon,

To see the blush of morning gone.

Could I give up the hopes that glow
In prospect like Elysian isles;
And let the cheerful future go;

With all her promises and smiles?

ΙΟ

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The future-cruel were the power

Whose doom would tear thee from my heart.
Thou sweetener of the present hour!
We cannot-no-we will not part.
Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight
That makes the changing seasons gay,
The grateful speed that brings the night,
The swift and glad return of day;
The months that touch, with added grace,
This little prattler at my knee,
In whose arch eye and speaking face
New meaning every hour I see;
The years, that o'er each sister land
Shall lift the country of my birth,
And nurse her strength, till she shall stand
The pride and pattern of the earth:
Till younger commonwealths, for aid,
Shall cling about her ample robe,
And from her frown shall shrink afraid
The crowned oppressors of the globe.
True-time will seam and blanch my brow—
Well-I shall sit with aged men,

And my good glass will tell me how
A grizzly beard becomes me then.
And then, should no dishonour lie

Upon my head, when I am grey,
Love yet shall watch my fading eye,
And smooth the path of my decay.
Then haste thee, Time-'tis kindness all
That speeds thy wingèd feet so fast;
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.

Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes,
And as thy shadowy train depart,
The memory of sorrow grows
A lighter burden on the heart.

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SONG OF THE STARS

WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,
And the empty realms of darkness and death
Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath,
And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame
From the void abyss by myriads came,-
In the joy of youth as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rang,

And this was the song the bright ones sang :

'Away, away through the wide, wide sky,
The blue fair fields that before us lie,-
Each sun with the worlds that round him roll,
Each planet, poised on her turning pole;
With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

. For the source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink as we go the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides;
Lo, yonder the living splendours play;
Away, on our joyous path, away!

'Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,

!

ΤΟ

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How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass!
And the path of the gentle winds is seen,
Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.
'And see where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews;
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone the night goes round!

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'Away, away! in our blossoming bowers,
In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, Love is brooding, and Life is born,

And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.

'Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres,
To weave the dance that measures the years;
Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent,
To the furthest wall of the firmament,-
The boundless visible smile of Him,

To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim.'

A FOREST HYMN

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THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 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,
Amid 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
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the grey 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.

ΙΟ

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