How long shall Nature's powers unite With quick unsparing strokes to smite

Man on his labour doom? 33

While rain and tempest, cold and heat,

With alternating lashes beat

His body to the tomb ?

How long shall the unwilling ear

Be constantly compelled to hear

Woe's unremitting strain?

While in a stifled undertone

The whole creation seems to groan-
Her sad face seamed with pain?

How often shall Thy chastenings vex, Thy dealings our weak minds perplex, Thy heavier judgments stun?

The vile live long in wealth and mirth, The good are hurried from the earth, Their works of love half-done!

While brick and mortar dingy piles Supplant the blooming country's smiles With buildings' sombre frown

Where flow'rets tossed their sun-lit heads

In mirky vapour grimly spreads

The black smoke of the town;

Till continents shall vainly strive
To feed the hosts that strain to live
On earth's contracted space,

Seeking in vain for new rich lands-
Till grim Starvation's sleepless bands
Strike down with ever-lifted hands
The struggling famished race.

May mortal minds in loving fear
Refuse at once to doubt or jeer
At things beyond their sight;
Omnipotence will show ere long
Dealings, to surface sense most wrong,
To be at core most right.

GRATITUDE TO CHRIST.

GFT as apart I fondly muse

On all the Saviour's varied woe

The life He once vouchsafed to choose;

The death He stooped to undergo,

His wondrous love to ev'ry man
Who will not from compassion fly,
Giving to Him this life's brief span,
Gaining from Him Eternity.

Love builds a wide defensive line,
A vast Sebastopol of strength,

Whose earth-works as they intertwine
Stretch far and wide in armèd length.

The gratitude that guards the mind
Is proof 'gainst Satan's surest shell;
Stronger than both the powers combined,
The love of Gain-the fear of Hell!

Thus safe intrenched I dread no foe,

Thus armed contentedly I live,

Leaving his mercy to bestow

Reward if aught He deign to give.

A

THE WAYSIDE POOL.

S the mean pool of rain beside the road
Can mirror in its dull and muddy face

The sun, resplendent in his high abode,
Th' attending clouds in ever-changing grace,

The vast expansion of the summer sky,
That everything within its sweep enfolds;
Albeit a portion only meet the eye,
And dull the clouded image that it holds;

So, Saviour, may Thy glowing image fill
This sin-blurred heart to beautify and bless;
Though marr'd and dull, yet be that image still
Some true reflection of Thy Righteousness.

THE EVERGREEN.

ORD, grant our love be not an annual

flower,

Leafless in wintry weather, but a tree

Whose foliage evergreen contains the power

To keep its hold when summer's warm suns flee.

To brave the flooding of the rains of woe
The blight of cares, and Terror's hurricane
The freezing night of Disappointment's snow.
That on the heart descends in loads of pain.

Lord, grant this hardy love may weather all,
Discovering a steadfast, clinging power,
When frosty fortune bids those feelings fall

That looked so firm in Pleasure's summer hour.