And though it still waits on this desolate strand,
A Pilgrim and stranger on earth,

Yet it knew in that glimpse of the Beautiful Land,
That it gazed on the home of its birth!

AROUND THEM, BRIGHT WITH ENDLESS SPRING.

From the Latin of AUGUSTINE.

ROUND them, bright with endless spring perpetual roses bloom

Warm balsams gratefully exude luxurious perfume, And crocuses and lilies white shine dazzling in the sun; Green meadows yield their harvests rich, and streams with honey run;

Unbroken droop the laden boughs with heavy fruitage

bent

Of incense and of odors strange the air is redolent; And neither sun nor moon nor stars, disperse their changeful light,

But the Lamb's eternal glory makes the happy city bright.

THERE IS A PLACE OF SACRED REST.

ROBERT TURNBULL.

HERE is a place of sacred rest,

TH

Far, far beyond the skies,

Where beauty smiles eternally,
And pleasure never dies,—

My Father's house, my heavenly home,
Where "many mansions" stand,
Prepared, by hands divine, for all

Who seek the better land.

When tossed upon the waves of life,
With fear on every side,-

When fiercely howls the gathering storm,
And foams the angry tide,—
Beyond the storm, beyond the gloom,
Breaks forth the light of morn,
Bright beaming from my Father's house,
To cheer the soul forlorn.

In that pure home of tearless joy
Earth's parted friends shall meet,
With smiles of love that never fade,
And blessedness complete.

There, there, adieus are sounds unknown:
Death frowns not on that scene;
But life and glorious beauty shine,
Untroubled and serene.

I KNOW NOT WHERE THOSE MANSIONS

I

LIE.

"We would see Jesus."

KNOW not where those blesséd mansions lie

That Christ departed to prepare on high;

Nor where the new Jerusalem doth stand,

The glorious centre of a happy land;

Nor the full meaning of that tree of life,
The fruits unceasing, leaves with blessing rife;
That crystal stream of life is still to me
A beautiful, a baffling mystery.

Then those bright spirits, from the body free,
How can they worship there as now they be?
And how with one another can they speak?-
The answer to all this I vainly seek.

These things I know not, yet I rest in this:
That Christ is there, and seeing Him is bliss.
For ever, Saviour, let me look on Thee,
And life shall be one endless ecstasy!

HER STREETS WITH BURNISHED GOLD

H

ARE PAVED.

FRANCIS QUArles.

ER streets with burnished gold are pavéd round,
Stars lie like pebbles scattered on the ground,

Pearl mixt with onyx, and the jasper stone

Made jewelled causeways to be trampled on.
There shines no sun, no moon by night,
The palace glory is the palace light;
There is no time to measure motion by
Where time is swallowed in Eternity;
Wry-mouthed disdain and corner-hunting lust,
And toady-faced fraud and beetle-browed distrust,
Soul-boiling rage and trouble stale sedition,
And giddy doubt and goggle-eyed suspicion,

And lumpish sorrow, and dangerous fear

Are banished thence, and death's a stranger there.

But simple love and sempiternal joys

Whose sweetness never gloats nor fulness cloys;
Where face to face our ravished eye shall see

Great God, that glorious One in Three

And Three in One-and seeing Him shall bless Him, And blessing love Him-and in love possess Him.

ALL ABOUT HIM SHEDDETH GLORIOUS

H

LIGHT.

EDMUND SPENSER.

IS sceptre is the rod of Righteousnesse,

With which He bruseth all His foes to dust, And the great dragon strongly doth represse, Under the rigour of His iudgment iust;

His seate is Truth, to which the faithfull trust, From whence proceed her beames so pure and bright, That all about Him sheddeth glorious light.

But that immortall light which there doth shine

Is many thousand times more bright, more cleare, More excellent, more glorious, more divine,

Through which to God all mortall actions here,
And even the thoughts of men, do plaine appeare;
For from th' Eternall Truth it doth proceed,
Through heavenly vertue which her beams doe breed.

With the great glorie of that wondrous light
His throne is all encompassed around,

And hid in his owne brightnesse from the sight

Of all that look thereon with eyes unsound;
And underneath his feet are to be found
Thunder, and lightning, and tempestuous fyre,
The instruments of his avenging yre.

There, in his bosome, Sapience doth sit,
The soveraine dearling of the Deity,
Clad like a queene, in royall robes most fit
For so great powre and peerelesse majesty,
And all with gemmes and iewels gorgeously
Adorned, that brighter than the starres appeare,
And make her native brightnesse seem more cleare.

And on her head a crown of purest gold
Is set, in signe of highest soverainty ;
And in her hand a sceptre she doth hold,

With which she rules the house of God on hy,

And menageth the ever-moving sky,

And in the same these lower creatures all

Subiected to her powre imperiall.

IN SEEING HIM THEY FIND REPOSE.

A

From the Italian of DANTE, by I. C. Wright.

LIGHT there is above which plainly shows

The great Creator to the creature, who

In seeing him alone can find repose,

And in a circle spreads to such degree,
That for the sun would its circumference

A girdle of too great dimensions be;