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MY PSALM.

Much have we seen since then, and much outgrown ;
The world of may-be broadens on our sight,
And vaster grows the shadow-clothed unknown---
And ever grander in the growing light.

But while the world's great possible grows more,
And wider outlooks face the eternal hills,
A narrowing vista through the years' dull score
Becomes the vale our straitened pathway fills.

And suns set earlier now, and twilights have
A shade of chill we hardly care to own,
And thinner breaks the water's measured stave,
And evening skies seem not so brightly sown.

And we, apostles of the new time's youth,
Are treading in the way our fathers trod,
Still blest to grasp their store of well-tried truth,
And follow in their patient path to God.

EVANGELINE M. JOHNSON.

My Psalm.

I

MOURN no more my vanished years;

Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,

My heart is young again,

The west winds blow, and singing low,
I hear the glad streams run:

The windows of my soul I throw

Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope and fear;
But grateful take the good I find,

The best of now and here.

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I plow no more a desert land,

To harvest weed and tare;

The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim-staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn ;

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through ftingèd lids to heaven;
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given;

The woods shall wear their robes of praise, The south-wind softly sigh,

And sweet calm days in golden haze

Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong:

The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,

To build as to destroy;

Nor less my heart for others feel,

That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told !

THE THREE VOICES.

Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track;
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved
His chastening turned me back-

That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,

Making the springs of time and sense,
Sweet with eternal good-

That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight-

That care and trial seem at last,
Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain ranges overpast,
In purple distance fair-

That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.

And so the shadows fall apart,
And so the west winds play;

And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day.

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

WHA

The Three Voices.

HAT saith the Past to thee? Weep!
Truth is departed;

Beauty hath died like the dream of a sleep,

Love is faint-hearted:

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Trifles of sense, the profoundly unreal,
Scare from our spirits God's holy ideal-

So, as a funeral-bell, slowly and deep,
So tolls the Past to thee! Weep!

How speaks the Present hour? Act!
Walk, upward glancing:

So shall thy footsteps in glory be tracked,
Slow, but advancing.

Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavor,
Let the great meaning ennoble it ever;

Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain;
Work, as believing that labor is gain.

What doth the Future say? Hope!
Turn thy face sunward!

Look where light fringes the far-rising slope-
Day cometh onward.

Watch! Though so long be the twilight delaying-
Let the first sunbeam arise on thee praying!

Fear not, for greater is God by thy side
Than armies of Satan against thee allied!

ANONYMOUS.

SEE,

The Cloud on the Way.

EE, before us in our journey broods a mist upon the ground;

Thither leads the path we walk in, blending with that gloomy

bound.

Never eye hath pierced its shadows to the mystery they

screen,

Those who once have passed within it nevermore on earth

are seen.

THE CLOUD ON THE WAY.

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Now it seems to stop beside us, now at seeming distance

lowers,

Leaving banks that tempt us onward bright with summer green and flowers.

Yet it blots the way forever; there our journey ends at last; With that dark cloud we enter and are gathered to the past. Thou who in this flinty pathway, leading through a stranger

land,

Passest down the rocky valley, walking with me hand in hand, Which of us shall be the soonest folded to that dim Unknown, Which shall leave the other walking in this flinty path alone? Even now I see thee shudder, and thy cheek is white with

fear,

And thou clingest to my side as that dark mist comes sweeping near.

"Here," thou say'st, "the path is rugged, sown with thorns that wound the feet;

But the sheltered glens are lovely, and the rivulet's song is

sweet:

Roses breathe from tangled thickets; lilies bend from ledges

brown ;

Pleasantly between the pelting showers the sunshine gushes

down.

Far be yet the hour that takes me where that chilly shadow

lies,

From the things I know and love, and from the sight of lov

ing eyes."

So thou murmurest, fearful one, but see, we tread a rougher

way;

Fainter grow the gleams of sunshine that upon the dark

rocks play;

Rude winds strew the faded flowers upon the crags o'er which

we pass;

Banks of verdure, when we reach them, hiss with tufts of

withered grass.

Yet upon the mist before us fix thine eyes with closer view,

See, beneath its sullen skirts the rosy morning glimmers

through.

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