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Thou the shame, the grief hast known; Though the sins were not Thine own, Thou hast deigned their load to bear: Gracious Son of Mary, hear!

HENRY HART MILMAN.

THE DEAD CHRIST.

TAKE the dead Christ to my chamber-
The Christ I brought from Rome;

Over all the tossing ocean,

He has reached His western home: Bear Him as in procession,

And lay Him solemnly

Where, through weary night and morning,

He shall bear me company.

The name I bear is other

Than that I bore by birth;

And I've given life to childrer

Who'll grow and dwell on earth; But the time comes swiftly towards meNor do I bid it stay

When the dead Christ will be more to me Than all I hold to-day.

Lay the dead Christ beside me

Oh, press Him on my heart;

I would hold Him long and painfully,
Till the weary tears should start-
Till the divine contagion

Heal me of self and sin,

And the cold weight press wholly down The pulse that chokes within.

Reproof and frost, they fret me; Towards the free, the sunny lands, From the chaos of existence,

I stretch these feeble hands

And, penitential, kneeling,

Pray God would not be wroth, Who gave not the strength of feeling And strength of labor both.

Thou 'rt but a wooden carving,
Defaced of worms, and old;

Yet more to me Thou couldst not be
Wert Thou all wrapt in gold,

Like the gem-bedizened baby

Which, at the Twelfth-day noon,
They show from the Ara Coli's steps
To a merry dancing tune.

I ask of Thee no wonders-
No changing white or red;
I dream not Thou art living,
I love and prize Thee dead.
That salutary deadness

I seek through want and pain,
From which God's own high power can bid
Our virtue rise again.

JULIA WARD HOWE

SONNET.

In the desert of the Holy Land I strayed, Where Christ once lived, but seems to live no more;

In Lebanon my lonely home I made;
I heard the wind among the cedars roar,
And saw far off the Dead Sea's solemn shore-
But 't is a dreary wilderness, I said,
Since the prophetic spirit hence has sped.
Then from the convent in the vale I heard,
Slow chanted forth, the everlasting Word-
Saying "I am He that liveth, and was dead;
And lo I am alive for evermore."
Then forth upon my pilgrimage I fare,
Resolved to find and praise Him every where

A HYMN.

DROP, drop, slow tears,

ANONYMOUS.

And bathe those beauteous feet
Which brought from heaven
The news and prince of peace
Cease not, wet eyes,

His mercies to entreat

To cry for vengeance

Sin doth never cease;

In your deep floods

Drown all my faults and fears; Nor let His eye

See sin, but through my tears.

PHINEAS FLETCHES

A CHRISTMAS HYMN.

IT was the calm and silent night!

CHRISTMAS.

Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might,

And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing warsPeace brooded o'er the hushed domain: Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars

Held undisturbed their ancient reign,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.

'Twas in the calm and silent night!

The senator of haughty Rome, Impatient, urged his chariot's flight,

From lordly revel rolling home; Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell

His breast with thoughts of boundless

sway;

What recked the Roman what befell

A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago?

Within that province far away
Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,

Fallen through a half-shut stable-door
Across his path. He passed-for naught
Told what was going on within;
How keen the stars, his only thought-
The air how calm, and cold, and thin,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!

Oh, strange indifference! low and high Drowsed over common joys and cares; The earth was still-but knew not why The world was listening, unawares. How calm a moment may precede

One that shall thrill the world for ever! To that still moment, none would heed, Man's doom was linked no more to severIn the solemn midnight, Centuries ago!

It is the calm and solemn night!

A thousand bells ring out, and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite

The darkness-charmed and holy now!

The night that erst no name had worn,
To it a happy name is given;
For in that stable lay, new-born,

765

The peaceful prince of earth and heaven. In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago!

ALFRED DOMMETT

CHRISTMAS.

RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night— Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new—

Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times:
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the landRing in the Christ that is to be.

ALFRED TENNYSON,

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THE LABORER'S NOONDAY HYMN.

767

THE EMIGRANTS IN BERMUDAS.

WHERE the remote Bermudas ride
In th' ocean's bosom, unespied—
From a small boat, that rowed along,
The list'ning winds received this song:

What should we do but sing His praise That led us through the watery maze Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks That lift the deep upon their backs, He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms, and prelate's rage. He gave us this eternal spring Which here enamels every thing, And sends the fowls to us in care, On daily visits through the air. He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night, And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows. He makes the figs our mouths to meet, And throws the melons at our feet. But apples-plants of such a price No tree could ever bear them twice. With cedars, chosen by His hand From Lebanon, He stores the land; And makes the hollow seas, that roar, Proclaim the ambergris on shore. He cast (of which we rather boast) The gospel's pearl upon our coast; And in these rocks for us did frame A temple, where to sound His name. Oh! let our voice His praise exalt Till it arrive at heaven's vault; Which, then, perhaps rebounding, may Echo beyond the Mexique bay.

Thus song they, in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;

And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

ANDREW MARVELL

HYMN OF THE HEBREW MAID.

WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,

An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise,

And trump and timbrel answered keen; And Zion's daughters poured their lays,

With priest's and warrior's voice betwee No portents now our foes amaze

Forsaken Israel wanders lone;
Our fathers would not know Thy ways,

And Thou hast left them to their own.

But, present still, though now unseen,
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen,

To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah's path

In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be Thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams-
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But Thou hast said, the blood of goats,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize-
A contrite heart, and humble thoughts,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.

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