By the great Future's dazzling hope made blind

To all the beauty, power, and truth behind.

Not without reverent awe shouldst thou put by

The cypress branches and the amaranth blooms,

Where, with clasped hands of prayer, upon their tombs

The effigies of old confessors lie,

God's witnesses; the voices of his will, Heard in the slow march of the centuries still!

Such were the men at whose rebuking frown,

Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's knee went down ;

Such from the terrors of the guilty drew The vassal's freedom and the poor man's due.

What your own pride and not his need requires?

Souls, than these shining gauds, He values more ;

Mercy, not sacrifice, his heart desires!" O faithful worthies! resting far behind In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep, Much has been done for truth and human-kind,

Shadows are scattered wherein ye groped blind;

Man claims his birthright, freer pulses leap

Through peoples driven in your day like sheep;

Yet, like your own, our age's sphere of light,

Though widening still, is walled around by night;

With slow, reluctant eye, the Church has read,

Sceptic at heart, the lessons of its Head; Counting, too oft, its living members less

Than the wall's garnish and the pulpit's dress;

World-moving zeal, with power to bless and feed

Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter need,

Instead of bread, holds out the stone of creed;

Sect builds and worships where its wealth and pride

And vanity stand shrined and deified, Careless that in the shadow of its walls God's living temple into ruin falls.

We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still,

Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of will,

PLES!" he replied

To such as came his holy work to chide. And brave Cesarius, stripping altars bare, And coining from the Abbey's golden hoard

The captive's freedom, answered to the prayer

Or threat of those whose fierce zeal for the Lord

Stifled their love of man, en dish

tread the land, even now, as Xavier

trod

149

BRUSSELS.

life,

From Autumn frost to April rain,
Too long her winter woods complain;
From budding flower to falling leaf,
Her summer time is all too brief.

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands,
And wintry hills, the school-house stands,
And what her rugged soil denies,
The harvest of the mind supplies.

The riches of the Commonwealth

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health;

And more to her than gold or grain,
The cunning hand and cultured brain.

For well she keeps her ancient stock,
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock;
And still maintains, with milder laws,
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause!
Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands,
While near her school the church-spire

stands;

Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule,

Who, for its trials, counts it less
A cause of praise and thankfulness?

151

It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the ripened field;
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Yet where our duty's task is wrought
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!

And ours the grateful service whence
Comes, day by day, the recompense;
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,
The fountain and the noonday shade.

And were this life the utmost span,
The only end and aim of man,
Better the toil of fields like these

Than waking dream and slothful ease.

But life, though falling like our grain,

school.

ALL'S WELL.

THE clouds, which rise with thunder, slake

Our thirsty souls with rain; The blow most dreaded falls to break From off our limbs a chain; And wrongs of man to man but make The love of God more plain. As through the shadowy lens of even The eye looks farthest into heaven On gleams of star and depths of blue The glaring sunshine never knew!

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie
Beneath a coldly-dropping sky,
Yet chill with winter's melted snow,
The husbandman goes forth to sow,

Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast
The ventures of thy seed we cast,
And trust to warmer sun and rain
To swell the germs and fill the grain.
Who calls thy glorious service hard?
Who deems it not its own reward?

And, early called, how blest are they Who wait in heaven their harvest-day!

Forevermore repeat,

In varied tones and sweet,
That beauty, in and of itself, is good.

O kind and generous friend, o'er whom
The sunset hues of Time are cast,
Painting, upon the overpast
And scattered clouds of noonday

sorrow

The promise of a fairer morrow,
An earnest of the better life to come;
The binding of the spirit broken,
The warning to the erring spoken,

The comfort of the sad,
The eye to see, the hand to cull
Of common things the beautiful,

The absent heart made glad
By simple gift or graceful token
Of love it needs as daily food,
Allown one Source, and all are good!
Hence, tracking sunny cove and
reach,

Where spent waves glimmer up the
beach,

And toss their gifts of weed and shell
From foamy curve and combing swell,
No unbefitting task was thine

To weave these flowers so soft and
fair

In unison with His design

Who loveth beauty everywhere;
And makes in every zone and clime,
In ocean and in upper air,
"All things beautiful in their time."

For not alone in tones of awe and

they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift

The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift

Their perfume on the air,

power

He speaks to man ;

shower

His rainbows span ;

own gift,

Making their lives a prayer!