Rock of the desert, prophet-sung!

Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks,

Or beat a drum on Yedo's templefloor.

wrong, The rich man's charm and fetish of the strong,

The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and shorn,

The seamless robe of equal mercy torn, The dear Christ hidden from his kindred flesh,

And, in his poor ones, crucified afresh ! Better the simple Lama scattering wide, Where sweeps the storm Alechan's steppes along,

His paper horses for the lost to ride, And wearying Buddha with his prayers to make

The figures living for the traveller's sake, Than he who hopes with cheap praise to beguile

The ear of God, dishonoring man the while;

Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges,

245

For Sabbath use in measured grists are ground;

And, ever while the spiritual mill goes round,

Between the upper and the nether stones,

Unseen, unheard, the wretched bondman groans,

And urges his vain plea, prayer-smothered, anthem-drowned!

WELL thought! who would not rather hear

The songs to Love and Friendship sung Than those which move the stranger's tongue,

And feed his unselected ear?

Our social joys are more than fame;
Life withers in the public look.
Why mount the pillory of a book,
Or barter comfort for a name?

Let such as love the eagle's scream
Divide with him his home of ice:
For me shall gentler notes suffice,
The valley-song of bird and stream;

The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees,
The Hail-beat chiming far away,
The cattle-low, at shut of day,
The voice of God in leaf and breeze!

Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, And help me to the vales below, (In truth, I have not far to go,) Where sweet with flowers the fields extend.

THE PALM-TREE.

Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm,

On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ? Or is it a ship in the breezeless calmn?

A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath,

And a rudder of palm it steereth with.

Branches of palm are its spars and rails,
Fibres of palm are its woven sails,
And the rope is of palm that idly trails!

What does the good ship bearso well?
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell,
And the milky sap of its inner cell.

What are its jars, so smooth and fine, But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine,

And the cabbage that ripens under the Line?

Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm? The master, whose cunning and skill could charm

Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.

In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft, From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed,

And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft!

His dress is woven of palmy strands, And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands,

Traced with the Prophet's wise commands!

READ AT THE BOSTON CELEBRATION OF THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF

For he who sings the love of man The love of God hath sung!

247

To-day be every fault forgiven
Of him in whom we joy!
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven
And leave the earth's alloy.
Be ours his music as of spring,
His sweetness as of flowers,
The songs the bard himself might sing
In holier ears than ours.

Sweet airs of love and home, the hum
Of household melodies,
Come singing, as the robins come

To sing in door-yard trees.
And, heart to heart, two nations lean,
No rival wreaths to twine,
But blending in eternal green
The holly and the pine!

THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR.

OUT and in the river is winding

The links of its long, red chain Through belts of dusky pine-land And gusty leagues of plain.

1ST MO., 1859.

How sweetly come the holy psalms
From saints and martyrs down,

The waving of triumphal palms

Above the thorny crown! The choral praise, the chanted prayers From harps by angels strung, The hunted Cameron's mountain airs, The hymns that Luther sung!

Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,
The sounds of earth are heard,
As through the open minster floats
The song of breeze and bird!
Not less the wonder of the sky
That daisies bloom below;

The brook sings on, though loud and high

The cloudy organs blow!

And, if the tender ear be jarred

That, haply, hears by turns The saintly harp of Olney's bard, The pastoral pipe of Burns, No discord mars His perfect plan Who gave them both a tongue;

With the drifting cloud-rack joins,
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins!

Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,

And heavy the hands that row.

And with one foot on the water,

And one upon the shore,
The Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.

Is it the clang of wild-geese?

Is it the Indian's yell,

That lends to the voice of the northwind

The tones of a far-off bell?

The voyageur smiles as he listens

To the sound that grows apace; Well he knows the vesper ringing Of the bells of St. Boniface.

The bells of the Roman Mission,

That call from their turrets twain,