It is not only in the sacred fane,
That homage should be paid to the Most High;
There is a temple, one not made with hands-
The vaulted firmament: far in the woods,
Almost beyond the sound of city chime,
At intervals heard through the breezeless air;
When not the limberest leaf is seen to move,
Save where the linnet lights upon the spray;
When not a flow'ret bends its little stalk,
Save where the bee alights upon the bloom;
There, rapt in gratitude, in joy, and love,
The man of God will pass the Sabbath noon;
Silence his praise; his disembodied thoughts,
Loosed from the load of words, will high ascend
Beyond the empyrean.—
Nor yet less pleasing at the heavenly throne,
The sabbath service of the shepherd boy,
In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled
To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill,
Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry,
Stretch'd on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son;
Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold,
And wonders why he weeps; the volume closed,
With thyme-sprig laid between the leaves, he sings
The sacred lays, his weekly lesson conned
With meikle care beneath the lowly roof,
Where humble lore is learned, where humble worth
Pines unrewarded by a thankless state.
Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen,
The shepherd-boy the Sabbath holy keeps,
Till on the heights he marks the straggling bands
Returning homeward from the house of prayer.
In peace they home resort. O blissful days!
When all men worship God as conscience wills.
Far other times our fathers' grandsires knew,
A virtuous race, to godliness devote.
They stood prepared to die, a people doomed To death ;-old men, and youths, and simple maids
With them each day was holy; but that morn,
On which the angel said, "See where the Lord
Was laid," joyous arose; to die that day
Was bliss. Long ere the dawn, by devious ways
O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought The upland moors, where rivers, there but brooks, Dispart to different seas. Fast by such brooks
A little glen is sometimes scooped, a plat
With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem,
Amid the heathery wild, that all around
Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these
Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foiled
A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws:
There, leaning on his spear (one of the array,
Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose
On England's banner, and had powerless struck
Th' infatuate monarch and his wavering host)
The lyart veteran heard the word of God
By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured
In gentle stream; then rose the song, the loud
Acclaim of praise; the wheeling plover ceased
Her plaint; the solitary place was glad:
And on the distant cairns the watcher's ear
Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note.
But years more gloomy followed; and no more
The assembled people dared, in face of day,
To worship God, or even at the dead
Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce,
And thunder-peals compelled the men of blood
To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly
The scattered few would meet, in some deep dell
By rocks o'ercanopied, to hear the voice,
Their faithful pastor's voice: he by the gleam
Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book,
And words of comfort spake: over their souls
His accents soothing came,—as to her young
The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of eve
She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed
By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads
Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast,
They, cherished, cower amid the purple blooms.
By EBENEZER ELLIOTT.
THE young, the wise, the kind,
Hath vanish'd! like the wind
That ripples up the stream,
And sighs itself to rest
On morning's breast.
What now remains to me,
Of him who was, and seem'd to be?
A dream! a dream alone!
I live-and dream
That he is gone!
If God is thought,
Can I, in God, be nought?
If deceived, we deceive,
And but try to believe
That things are what they seem
If life is the dream
Of numberless numbers
Who walk in their slumbers;
Though he, the meek, the calm,
Seems to me like a psalm
Heard o'er some midnight shore
Awhile, my spirits listening round,
And then heard never more,
But leaving the heart sore,
And stillness vex'd with sound;
Ev'n o'er the life-left tenement
On which a viewless finger
Writes,"
"This is dust!" almost in hope,
Will love and sorrow linger.
AMERICAN SCENERY.
A passage in WHITTIER's Bridal of Pennacook.
WE had been wandering for many days
Through the rough northern country. We had seen
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,
Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips
Of the bright waters. We had check'd our steeds,
Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burden'd with the everlasting moan
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
We had look'd upward where the summer sky,
Tassell'd with clouds light-woven by the sun,
Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags
O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land
Beyond the wall of mountains. We had pass'd
The high source of the Saco; and, bewilder'd
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills
Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,
The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop
Of Old Agioochook had seen the mountains
Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick
As meadow molehills-the far sea of Casco
A white gleam on the horizon of the east;
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
Mossehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge
Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun!
And we had rested underneath the oaks
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken
By the perpetual beating of the falls
Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung
By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
Or lazily gliding through its intervals,
From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam
Of sunlit waters. We had see the moon
Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines
Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams
At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver
The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.
A marvellous specimen of versification, by SOUTHEY.
How does the water come down at Lodore?
Here it comes sparkling,
And there it lies darkling;
Here smoking and frothing,
Its tumult and wrath in,
It hastens along, conflicting, strong,
Now striking and raging,
As if a war waging,
Its caverns and rocks among.
Spouting and frisking,
Twining and twisting,
Around and around,
Collecting, disjecting,
With endless rebound;
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in ;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzing and deafening the ear with its sound.
Reeding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
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