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I

MY PSALM.

MOURN no more my vanished years:

Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward, nor behind,
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;

The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff,-I lay
Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play

Among the ripening corn,

Nor freshness of the flowers of May

Blow through the autumn morn;

L

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through fringed lids to heaven;
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given;

The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
The south-wind softly sigh,

And sweet, calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong :

The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,—
To build, as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel
That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,
And knoweth more of all my needs
Than all my prayers have told.

Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track;

That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved
His chastening turned me back;

That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,

Making the springs of time and sense.
Sweet with eternal good;

That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight;

That care and trial seem at last,
Through memory's sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast,
In purple distance fair;

That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.

And so the shadows fall apart

And so the west-winds play;

And all the windows of my heart

I open to the day.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

Faith.

'STRONG SON OF GOD.'

TRONG Son of God, immortal Love,

STR

Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die ; And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood Thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see ;
And yet we trust it comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster.

We are fools and slight;

We mock Thee when we do not fear; But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

'WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS.'

T fortifies my soul to know

IT

That, though I perish, Truth is so;

That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall

That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

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