Christian, lookup? thy feet may slide;This is a slippery way!Yet One is walking by thy sideWhose arm should be thy stay,Thou canst not see that blessed form,Nor view that loving smileWith eager eyes thus earthward bent–Christian, look up a while! Christian, look up!–what seest thou hereTo court thy anxious eyes?Earth is beneath thee, lone and […]

How beautiful, how beautiful,Beneath the morning sky,In bridal veil of snowy mist,These dreamy headlands lie!How beautiful, in soft repose,Upon the water’s breast,Steeped in the sunlight’s golden calm,These fairy islets rest! A Sabbath hush enfolds the hills,And broods upon the deepWhose music every hollow fills,And climbs each rocky steep,Now low and soft like love’s own sigh,Now […]

Living for Christ, I die;–how strange, that I,Thus dying, live,–and yet, thus living, die!Living for Christ, I die;-yet wondrous thought,In that same death a deathless life is wrought;–Living, I die to Earth, to self, to sin;–Oh, blessed death, in which such life I win! Dying for Christ, I live!–death cannot beA terror, then, to one […]

What! only to stayFor a single day?Thou beautiful, bright hued onJust to open thine eyesTo the blue of the skiesAnd the light of the glorious sun,Then, to fade awayIn the same rich ray,And die ere the day is done? Bright thing of a dayThou hast caught a rayFrom Morn’s jewelled curtain foldOn thy burning cheek,And […]

I will not despair while thou rulest the storm,Though the red lightning stream o’er the cloud’s sable-breast,For I catch through the darkness bright gleams of thy form,And I know ’tis thy voice lulls the tempest to rest–The wild tempest to rest:Nor yet, though the shadows of deepening night,Hang over my path like the pall of […]

Up from the spirit-depths ringing,Softly your melody swells,Sweet as a seraphim’s singing,Tender-toned memory-bells!The laughter of childhood,The song of the wildwood,The tinkle of streams through the echoing dell,The voice of a mother,The shout of a brother.Up from life’s morning melodiously swell. Up from the spirit-depths ringingRichly your melody swells,Sweet reminiscences bringing,Joyous-toned memory-bells!–Youth’s beautiful bowers,Her dew-spangled flowers,The […]

All over the earth like a mantle,Golden, and green, and grey,Crimson, and scarlet, and yellow,The Autumn foliage lay;–The sun of the Indian SummerLaughed at the bare old treesAs they shook their leafless branchesIn the soft October breeze. Gorgeous was every hill-side,And gorgeous every nook,And the dry, old log was gorgeous,Spanning the little brook;Its holiday robes, […]

Over my window in pencillings white,Stealthily traced in the silence of night–Traced with a pencil as viewless as air,By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair,Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and trueThat I’m filled with amaze as the marvel I view. Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen,–Feathery ferns in the forest-depths […]

Why art thou here, little, motherless one,–Why art thou here in this bleak world alone?With that innocent smile on thy beautiful brow,What hath this stern world for such as thou? Why art thou here in this world of unrest,Thou that of angels shouldst be the guest?–Oh, wild are the storms of this wintry clime,Dire are […]

John Littlewit, friends, was a credulous man.In the good time long ago,Ere men had gone wild o’er the latter-day dreamOf turning the world upside down with steam,Or of chaining the lightning down to a wire,And making it talk with its tongue of fire. He was perfectly sure that the world stood still,And the sun and […]

O throbbing heart, be still!Canst thou not bearThe heavy dash of Memory’s troubled tide,Long sternly pent, but broken forth again,Sweeping all barriers ruthlessly aside,And leaving desolation in its trainWhere all was fair? Fair, did I say?–Oh yes!–I’d reared sweet flowersOf steadfast hope, and quiet, patient trust,Above the wreck and ruin of my years;–Had won a […]

[“Dr. Reid, a traveller through the highlands of Peru, is said to have found in the desert of Alcoama the dried remains of an assemblage of human beings, five or six hundred in number, men, women, and children, seated in a semicircle as when alive, staring into the burning waste before them. It would seem […]

A PEN PICTURE FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. Upon the plain of Dura stood an image great and high,With golden forehead broad and bright beneath the morning sky;All regal in its majesty and kingly in its mien,The grandest and most glorious thing the world had ever seen! Full sixty cubits high in air the lordly head […]

[Footnote: In the Grand River, at Brantford, July 30th, 1875, Miss Jessie Hamilton, adopted daughter of C.H. Waterous, Esq., Brantford, aged 14 years and 3 months, and Miss Ella E. Murton, only daughter of John W. Murton, Esq., Hamilton, aged 14 years.] The morning dawned without a cloud,But evening came with pall and shroud,–With muffled […]

Standing alone by the highway side,Stately, and stalwart, and tempest-tried,Staunch of body and strong of bough,Fronting the sky with an honest brow,King of the forest and field is he–Yon way side watcher–the old Elm tree. When kindly Summer, with smile serene,Drapes branch and bough in her robe of green,Ever the joyous, wild birds comeAnd sing […]

Before them lay the heaving deepBehind, the foemen pressed;And every face grew dark with fear,And anguish filled each breastSave one, the Leader’s, he, serene,Beheld, with dauntless mind,The restless floods before them seen.The foe that pressed behind.“Why hast thou brought us forth for this?”The people loudly cry;–“Were there no graves in Egypt’s land,That here we come […]

RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO HIS PATRONESS AND FRIEND,BY THE LITTLE, BROWN SINGER HIMSELF. Merrily!Merrily!Tschee! tschee! tschee!What can the meaning of these things be?Tiniest buds and leaflets green–Who shall tell me what these things mean?Merrily!Merrily!Tschee! tschee! tschee!Much I guess they were meant for me! Tsu-ert!Tsu-ert!Tschee! tschee! tschee!So I shall eat them up you seeSomebody, somewhere, is kindly […]

Brethren, go! the day is bright’ningAs the sultry noon steals on,And the fields, already whit’ning,Tell of labor to be done. There are toilsome days before you,Burdens that you may not shun,Clouds will gather darkly o’er you,Reeds will fail you one by one. Yet go forth to strong endeavor,‘Neath the shadow of the cross;He who calls […]

Dark was the world when from the bowersOf forfeit Eden man went forth,With aching heart and blighted powers,To till the sterile soil of earth;Yet, even then, a glimmering lightFaintly illumed the eastern skies,And, struggling through the mists of night,Beamed soft on Abel’s sacrifice. It shone on Abram’s eager eyesUpon Moriah’s lonely height,And Jacob, ‘neath the […]

“Work to-day in my vineyard!” Hast thou, then, been called to laborIn the vineyard of thy Lord,With the promise that, if faithful,Thou shall win a sure reward?–Look! the tireless sun is hastingToward the zenith, and the day,Which in vanity thou’rt wasting,Speedeth rapidly away! Lo! the field is white for harvest,And the laborers are few;Canst thou, […]