Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes when the night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun,-

Noiselessly as the springtime

Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves,—
So, without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain crown
The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Beth-peor's height,
Out of his rocky eyrie,

Looked on the wondrous sight.
Perchance the lion, stalking,

Still shuns the hallowed spot;

For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.

Lo! when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed, and muffled drum,

Follow the funeral car.

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute gun.

Amid the noblest of the land

Men lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honored place
With costly marble dressed.

Ja the great minster transept,

Where lights like glories fall,

And the sweet choir sings, and the organ rings, Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the bravest warrior

That ever buckled sword; This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher Traced, with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage,

As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honor,
The hillside for his pall;
To lie in state while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall;

And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave;

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave? -

In that deep grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again - most wondrous thought!-
Before the judgment day,

And stand with glory wrapped around

On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life
With the Incarnate Son of God.

O, lonely tomb in Moab's land,
O, dark Beth-peor's hill,

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still.

God hath His mysteries of Grace-
Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the secret sleep

Of him he loved so well.

- Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,
Man marks the earth with ruin his control

Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage,- what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: - not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime -
The image of Eternity- the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers - they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,- 't was a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane

as I do here. -Lord Byron.

THE LOST CHORD

Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

HYMN TO THE NIGHT

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-
From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.