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THE VANITY OF LIFE IMPROVED.

I've seen the lovely garden flowers

In all their beauty glow ;

I've seen the stormy hailstone showers
Lay all their glory low.

I've seen the youth in beauty's pride,
And highest health to-day,
Before to-morrow's evening tide

A breathless lump of clay.

Then what's our life? a vapour sure;

A way it swiftly flies;

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The joys of life, how insecure,
How trifling such a prize!

The hastening day will soon arrive,
When awful death shall come,

And close the scene of this vain life

In darkness and the tomb.

O! may the Living Word, the Light,
Shine forth before our eyes;

In that dread hour dispel the night
With everlasting rays.

And in the dark and dismal road,
Which we are doomed to tread,
Our comfort be the word of God,
Our rock, our strength, our shade.

His word, who died upon the tree,

Can fortify the heart,

And, even in death, our minds can free,

And bid all fear depart.

The work He finished on the cross,

Salvation must insure;

And his unspotted righteousness

For ever will endure.

Watts.

THE SHORTNESS AND MISERY OF
HUMAN LIFE.

Our days, alas! our mortal days,
Are short, and wretched too;
Evil and few, the Patriarch says,
And well the Patriarch knew.

'Tis but at best a narrow bound
That heaven allows to men ;

And pains and sins run through the round
Of threescore years and ten.

Well, if ye must be sad and few,
Run on my days in haste:
Moments of sin, and months of woe,
Ye cannot fly too fast.

Let heavenly love prepare my soul,
And call her to the skies,

Where

years of long salvation roll, And glory never dies.

Anon.

WARNINGS,

FOREBODING THE FATE OF ROSABELLE.

O listen, listen, ladies gay!

No haughty feat of arms I tell; Soft is the note, and sad the lay,

That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.

Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant, crew! And gentle ladye, deign to stay! Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch,

Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day.

The blackening wave is edged with white; To inch and rock the sea-mews fly;

The fishers have heard the water-sprite,

Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh.

Last night the gifted seer did view

A wet shroud swathed round ladye gay; Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch

;

Why cross the gloomy firth to-day ?'

< 'Tis not because Lord Lindesay's heir,
To-night at Roslin leads the ball,
But that my ladye-mother there
Sits lonely in her castle-hall.

''Tis not because the ring they ride,
And Lindesay at the ring rides well,
But that my sire the wine will chide,
If 'tis not filled by Rosabelle.'

O'er Roslin all that dreary night

A wonderous blaze was seen to gleam; "Twas broader than the watch-fire light, And brighter than the bright moon-beam.

It glared on Roslin's castled rock,
It ruddied all the copse-wood glen;
'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak,
And seen from caverned Hawthornden.

Seemed all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffined lie;

Each baron for a sable shroud,

Sheathed in his iron panoply.

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