And many a chance and change I've seen, Yet trusting to a guiding hand And strength, but not my own. That hand and strength have safe kept me And they will be around me still Till I behold the light. The light that beameth from my home, Where many mansions be, Which shines in its full radiance I thus have told the story, writ Not for the story, nor to boast O trust in Jesus! seek His grace, A suppliant sinner's prayer, but hear In answer to your cry for help R. R. THOM, Author of Little Will,' &c. Too Late; or, a more Convenient Season. H, saddest memory of life, Felt at the last most keen! To think what might have been: To think of prayers they might have prayed To think of hands that might have touched To think of glowings of the heart, Of blessed hours of power divine, Because the soul with fond desire And gave the conscience promise vain, Some day in earnest, unto God, For heavenly grace to pray; But that day never, never came, Be wise, the gate is open now, His spirit waits to bless your soul, He waits your cry to hear. The forest was a sea of flame Across the level wild we sped, Until afar above the waste But who is this amid the grass He lies disabled on the ground, "I know him," said the trapper old, "He preaches to the redskin tribes. But what are we to do? For not your horse, my friend, nor mine And yet 'twill never do to go Amid the lurid smoke and flames, A victim of the fire. "Off saddles! let the horses go!" "We'll burn the grass." He lighted it; We waited till it swept away, We saw the fire approaching still, Near and more near the firetide swept, And we were safe, the storm of fire While still afar adown the wind I pointed to the sick man then: "What think you, will he die?" "Not yet, I trust, if we can help," The trapper made reply. "I carry here a potent drug, Full many a life I've known it save; We bore the sick man to a stream; By turns we nursed him there; It was a sad and dreary time Upon that desert bare. But at the last he safely came Out of the fever's strife: "Tell me," he asked, in whispered tones, "How you did save my life; "For I remember nothing more, But only that I fell. What happened then?" The trapper looked I told the story from the first, And of the billowy sea of flame, And how, when he lay there, and life The trapper's potent medicine |