TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS. By Narragansett's sunny bay, Beneath his green embowering wood, To me it seems but yesterday Since at his side I stood. The slopes lay green with summer rains, The western wind blew fresh and free, And glimmered down the orchard lanes The white surf of the sea. With us was one, who, calm and true, Life's highest purpose understood, And, like his blessed Master, knew The joy of doing good. Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame, Unknown to power or place, yet where He told of England's sin and wrong, The green field's want and woe. And at one common altar knelt The Quaker and the priest. 133 And not in vain : with strength renewed, And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim, For that brief meeting, each pursued The path allotted him. How echoes yet each Western hill How are the hearts of freemen still The stranger treads his native soil, The claim of England's poor. Before him time-wrought barriers fall, Old fears subside, old hatreds melt, And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall, The Saxon greets the Celt. The yeoman on the Scottish lines, The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim, The delver in the Cornwall mines, Look up with hope to him. Swart smiters of the glowing steel, Dark feeders of the forge's flame, Pale watchers at the loom and wheel, Repeat his honored name. And thus the influence of that hour Of converse on Rhode Island's strand, Lives in the calm, resistless power Which moves our father-land. God blesses still the generous thought, Where is the victory of the grave? What dust upon the spirit lies? God keeps the sacred life he gave, The prophet never dies! TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS, LATE PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE THOU hast fallen in thine armor, While vainly alike on her eye and her ear Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer. How true to our hearts was that beautiful sleeper! With smiles for the joyful, with tears for the weeper! Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful or gay, With warnings in love to the passing astray. For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow for them Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem; And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove, And the sting of reproof was still tempered by love. As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven, As a star that is lost when the daylight is given, As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss, She hath passed to the world of the holy from this. DANIEL WHEELER. [DANIEL WHEELER, a minister of the Society of Friends, and who had labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this country.] O DEARLY loved! And worthy of our love! No more Thy aged form shall rise before The hushed and waiting worshipper, In meek obedience utterance giving To words of truth, so fresh and living, That, even to the inward sense, They bore unquestioned evidence Of an anointed Messenger! Or, bowing down thy silver hair In reverent awfulness of prayer, The world, its time and sense, shut out, The brightness of Faith's holy trance Gathered upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt, The cold, dark shadows resting here In Time's unluminous atmosphere, The oak has fallen! While, meet for no good work, the vine Across the Neva's cold morass With winter's arrowy keenness pass; Or where the unwarning tropic gale Smote to the waves thy tattered sail, Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat Against Tahiti's mountains beat; The same mysterious Hand which gave Deliverance upon land and wave, Tempered for thee the blasts which blew Ladaga's frozen surface o'er, And blessed for thee the baleful dew Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, Beneath this sunny heaven of ours, Midst our soft airs and opening flowers Hath given thee a grave! Who Is His will be done, seeth not as man, whose way Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay "My Father careth still for me!" Called from thy hearth and home, from her, The last bud on thy household tree, The last dear one to minister In duty and in love to thee, From all which nature holdeth dear, Feeble with years and worn with pain, To seek our distant land again, here, In childlike trust serenely going O, far away, DANIEL NEALL. Where never shines our Northern star With forehead to its damp wind bare, And taro-plains of Tooboonai, 137 And joining with a seraph's tongue And though the ways of Zion mourn His ancient watch around us keepeth; To gather to the fold once more And Zion's broken walls restore; By thousands round thee, in the hour Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep, That He who bade the islands keep Silence before him, might renew Their strength with his unslumbering power, They too shall mourn that thou art gone, That nevermore thy aged lip Seals of thy true apostleship. Whose gems of glory purely burn Be evermore reserved for them - Of joy for mourning, unto her! With fresher life be clothed upon; DANIEL NEALL. I. FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when for men ; To plant the banner on the outer wall Who here, through toil and sorrow, Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post turn Many to righteousness, May we not think of thee as wearing That star-like crown of light, and bearing, Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band, The fadeless palm-branch in thy hand; Fronting the violence of a maddened |