Who formed Behemoth, huge and high, That at a draught the river drains,
And great Leviathan to lie, Like floating isle, on ocean plains?
No God!-Who warms the heart to heave
With thousand feelings soft and sweet,
And prompts the aspiring soul to leave
The earth we tread beneath our feet,
And soar away on pinions fleet,
Beyond the scene of mortal strife,
With fair ethereal forms to meet,
That tell us of an after life?
No God!-Who fixed the solid ground
On pillars strong, that alter not?
Who spread the curtained skies around?
Who doth the ocean bounds allot?
Who all things to perfection brought
On earth below, in heaven abroad?-
Go ask the fool of impious thought
That dares to say,-"There is no God!"
TO-MORROW!-Mortal, boast not thou
Of time and tide that are not now!
But think, in one revolving day,
How earthly things may pass away!
To-day-while hearts with rapture spring,
The youth to beauty's lip may cling;
To-morrow-and that lip of bliss
May sleep unconscious of his kiss.
To-day-the blooming spouse may press
Her husband in a fond caress;
To-morrow-and the hands that pressed,
May wildly strike her widowed breast.
To-day-the clasping babe may drain
The milk-stream from its mother's vein;
To-morrow-like a frozen rill,
That bosom-current may be still.
To-day-the merry heart may feast
On herb and fruit, and bird and beast;
To-morrow-spite of all thy glee,
The hungry worms may feast on thee.
To-morrow!-Mortal, boast not thou
Of time and tide that are not now!
But think, in one revolving day,
That e'en thyself may pass away.
THOU askest what hath changed my heart,
And where hath fled my youthful folly?
I tell thee, Tamar's virtuous art
Hath made my spirit holy.
Her eye-as soft and blue as even
When day and night are calmly meeting
Beams on my heart like light from heaven,
And purifies its beating.
The accents fall from Tamar's lip,
Like dewdrops from the rose-leaf dripping,
When honey-bees all crowd to sip,
And cannot cease their sipping.
The shadowy blush that tints her cheek,
For ever coming, ever going,
May well the spotless fount bespeak
That sets the stream a-flowing.
Her song comes o'er my thrilling breast,
E'en like the harp-string's holiest measures,
When dreams the soul of lands of rest
And everlasting pleasures.
Then ask not what hath changed my heart,
Or where hath fled my youthful folly!
I tell thee, Tamar's virtuous art
Hath made my spirit holy.
REGINALD HEBER, Bishop of Calcutta, was born in 1783. He was educated at Oxford, and there produced his celebrated prize poem, entitled Palestine, when only nineteen years of age; and he afterwards wrote various other poetical pieces of great sweetness and elevation of thought. Few Hymns in the English language can be pointed out as more admirable than some that emanated from his pen. To Heber belongs the merit of attempting to reform our Church Psalmody; a work of infinite importance. He died in India in 1826, having held his dignified situation for only a short period.
THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.
FOR many a coal-black tribe and cany spear,
The hireling guards of Mizraim's throne, were there;
On either wing their fiery coursers check
The parched and sinewy sons of Amalek,
While close behind, inured to feast on blood,
Decked in Behemoth's spoils, the tall Shangalla strode.
Mid blazing helms and bucklers rough with gold,
Saw ye how swift the scythed chariots rolled?
So these are they, whom lord of Afric's fates,
Old Thebes, has poured through all her hundred gates.
Mother of armies! How the emerald glowed,
Where flushed with power and vengeance Pharaoh rode;
And stoled in white, those blazing wheels before
Osiris' ark his swarthy wizards bore:
And still reponsive to the trumpet's cry,
The priestly sistrum murmured "Victory."
Why swell these shouts that rend the desert's gloom,
Whom come ye forth to combat? warrior, whom?
These flocks and herds, this faint and weary train,
Red from the scourge, and weary from the chain?
Friend of the poor! the poor and friendless save--
Giver and Lord of freedom! help the slave.
North, south, and west the sandy whirlwinds fly
The circling pall of Egypt's chivalry.
On earth's last margin throng the weeping train,
Their cloudy guide moves on-And must we sweep the main?
Mid the light spray the snorting camels stood,
Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood.
He comes their leader comes the man of God
O'er the wide water lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads; the circling waves retreat
In hoarse deep murmurs from his holy feet:
And the chafed surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sand and coral hills below.
With limbs that falter and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass a deep and slippery dell;
Round them arise, in pristine chaos hurled,
The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calf's low-roofed haunts, are seen.
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread,
The seething waters storm above their head;
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.
Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,
Or dark to them or cheerless came the night;
Still in the van along that dreadful road
Blazed broad and fierce the brandished torch of God,
Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave
On the long mirror of the rosy wave;
While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek and dance in every eye-
To them alone:-for Mizraim's wizard train
Invoke for light their monster gods in vain :
Clouds heaped on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods along their line;
Yet on they go by reckless vengeance led,
And range unconscious through the ocean's bed.
Till midway now that strange and fiery form,
Showed his dread visage, lightening through the storm,
With withering splendour blasted all their might,
And brake their chariot wheels and marred their coursers flight. "Fly, Mizraim fly," the ravenous floods they see,
And fiercer than the floods, the Deity!
"Fly, Mizraim, fly," from Edom's coral strand,
Again the prophet stretched his dreadful wand:
With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep,
And all is waves-a dark and lonely deep:
Yet o'er those lonely waves such murmurs passed,
As mortal wailing swelled the nightly blast,
And strange and sad the whispering surges bore
The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore.
Oh! welcome came the morn, where Israel stood
In trustless wonder by the avenging flood!
Oh! welcome came the cheerful morn to show
The drifted wreck of Zoan's pride below;
The mingled limbs of men, the broken car,
A few sad relics of a nation's war:
Alas, how few! Then soft as Elim's well,
The precious tears of new-born freedom fell;
And he whose hardened heart alike had borne
The hours of bondage and the oppressor's scorn,
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