Do yet in its disdain endure the footing

Of your armed legions, 't is because it labors
With silent throes of expectation, waiting

The signal of your scattering. Lo! the mountains
Bend o'er you with their huge and lowering shadows,
Ready to rush and overwhelm: the winds
Do listen, panting for the tardy presence

Of Him that shall avenge. And there is scorn,
Yea, there is laughter, in our fathers' tombs,
To think that Heathen conqueror doth aspire
To lord it over God's Jerusalem!

Yea, in hell's deep and desolate abode,

Where dwell the perished kings, the chief of earth;
They whose idolatrous warfare erst assailed

The Holy City, and the chosen people;

They wait for thee, the associate of their hopes

And fatal fall, to join their ruined conclave.

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40

He whom the Red Sea 'whelmed with all his host,
Pharaoh, the Egyptian; and the kings of Canaan ;
The Philistine, the Dagon worshipper;
Moab, and Edom, and fierce Amalek;
And he of Babylon, whose multitudes,

Even on the hill where gleam your myriad spears,
In one brief night the invisible Angel swept
With the dark, noiseless shadow of his wing,
And morn beheld the fierce and riotous camp
One cold, and mute, and tombless cemetery;
Sennacherib: all, all are risen, are moved;
Yea, they take up their taunting song of welcome
To him' who, like themselves, hath madly warred
'Gainst Zion's walls, and miserably fallen

*

Before the avenging God of Israel!

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50

*The camp of Titus comprehended the space called the "Assyrian's Camp."

2*

EXERCISE VIII.

Flowers, the Gift of Divine Benignity.—MRS. HEMANS.

Yes, there shall still be joy,

Where God hath poured forth beauty; and the voice
Of human love shall still be heard in praise

The All-Beneficent! I bless Thy name,

5

:

10

That Thou hast mantled the green earth with flowers,
Linking our hearts to nature! By the love
Of their wild blossoms, our young footsteps first
Into her deep recesses are beguiled –
Her minster cells - dark glen and forest bower:
Where, thrilling with its earliest sense of Thee,
Amidst the low, religious whisperings,
And shivery leaf-sounds of the solitude,
The spirit wakes to worship, and is made

Thy living temple. By the breath of flowers,
Thou callest us from city throngs and cares,

15

Back to the woods, the birds, the mountain streams,
That sing of Thee! — back to free childhood's heart,
Fresh with the dews of tenderness! - Thou bidd'st
The lilies of the field with placid smile
Reprove man's feverish heart-strings, and infuse
Through his worn soul a more unworldly life,
With their soft, holy breath. Thou hast not left
His purer nature, with its fine desires,
Uncared for in this universe of Thine!
The glowing rose attests it, the beloved

Of poet hearts, touched by their fervent dreams
With spiritual light, and made a source
Of heaven-ascending thoughts.
Thou lend'st the vernal bliss: -

E'en to faint age

The old man's eye

Falls on the kindling blossoms, and his soul
Remembers youth and love, and hopefully
Turns unto Thee, who call'st earth's buried germs
From dust to splendor; as the mortal seed

Shall, at Thy summons, from the grave spring up
To put on glory,—to be girt with power,

And filled with immortality. Receive

Thanks, blessings, love, for these, Thy lavish boons,
And, most of all, their heavenward influences,

O Thou that gav’st us flowers!

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· 40

EXERCISE IX.

"Show us the Father."-MRS. SIGOURNEY.

1. Have ye not seen Him, when through parted snows
Wake the first kindlings of the vernal green?

When 'neath its modest veil the arbutus blows,
And the blue violet bursts its mossy screen?

When the wild rose, that asks no florist's care,
Unfoldeth its rich leaves, have ye not seen Him there?

2. Have ye not seen Him, when the infant's eye,

Through its bright sapphire window, shows the mind? When in the trembling of the tear or sigh

Floats forth that essence, trembling and refined? Saw ye not Him, the Author of our trust,

Who breathed the breath of life into a frame of dust?

3. Have ye not heard Him, when the tuneful rill
Casts off its icy chains, and leaps away?

In thunders, echoing loud from hill to hill?
In song of birds, at break of summer's day?

Or in the Ocean's everlasting roar,

Battling the old gray rocks, that sternly guard his shore?

4. When in the stillness of the Sabbath morn,

The week's dread cares in tranquil slumber rest, When in the heart the holy thought is born,

And Heaven's high impulse warms the waiting breast, Have ye not felt Him, when your voiceless prayer Swelled out in tones of praise, announcing God was there?

5. Show us the Father! If ye fail to trace

His chariot, when the stars majestic roll, His pencil, 'mid earth's loveliness and grace, His presence, in the Sabbath of the soul, How can ye see Him, till the day of dread,

When to the assembled worlds the Book of Doom is read?

EXERCISE X.

The Thoughts of the Dumb.-J. H. CLINCH.

From words we gain ideas; — there are some,
Alas! whose only knowledge rests in words,
Their wisdom empty wind. How different
The shadowy thoughts which wander through such minds,
From those ideal pictures, fresh and warm
And well defined, which crowd the mental sight
Of the deaf mute! Words are unknown to him
His thoughts are things— his logic and his chain
Of metaphysical deductions all

Pass through his brain in bright depicted facts,
The fresh reflections in mind's mirror clear
Of Art's achievements or of Nature's works.

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10

One, to whom Heaven, in wisdom infinite,

But to our sense inscrutable, had locked

The gates of Sound and Speech, was asked to tell
The meaning of “forgiveness.”

Pausing then

A moment, with the eye of memory

15

"To glance from Heaven to Earth, from Earth to Heaven,”

For fitting thoughts, he seized the ready pen

And wrote,

The odor which the trampled flower

Gives out to bless the foot which crushes it!

20

EXERCISE XI.

Old Age and Death.—WALLER.

1., The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

2. The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home!

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Threė poets, in three distant ages born, ›
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last.