So not alone we stand upon the shore,

'Twill be as though we had been there before;

We shall meet more we know,

Than we can meet below,

The song of thanks and praise, **
For those high instincts,

Those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day. *
Truths that wake

And perish never, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence.

Hence in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling ever

more.

A host of angels flying,

Through cloudless skies impelled,
Upon the earth beheld
A pearl of beauty lying,
Worthy to glitter bright,
In Heaven's vast halls of light.
They spread their pinions o'er it,
That little pearl which shone
With a lustre all its own,
And then on high they bore it,
Where glory has its birth,-
But left the shell on earth.

The spoiler set the seal of silence,
But there beamed a smile

So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow Death gazed and left it there. He dared not steal

The signet ring of Heaven.

We saw thee come, we saw thee go,
Brief guest in this our earthly land.
Where from? where to? We only know,
From God's own hand to God's own hand.

We shall go home to our father's house,
To our Father's house in the skies;
Where the hope of souls shall have no
blight,

Wordsworth.

As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights

On the wider, statelier stream,
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its earlier mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the dim expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with

foam

As it draws to the ocean, may strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast:
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night wind
Brings up the stream

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
-Matthew Arnold.

Build thee more stately mansions, O, my soul !

As the swift seasons roll,
Leave thy low vaulted past,

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more

vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thy outgrown shell by life's unrest

ing sea.

-Holmes.