FOLLOW THOU ME.

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With thee and with thy saints to cast my lot:
Ah, my dear Lord, let me not be forgot,

Let me not live in vain!

Can we not part in silence, since for ever,

This world and I? From scorn and taunt refrain ?

Must it still hate and wound? still stir the fever

Of this poor throbbing brain?

Ah, yes, it must be so, my God, my God; 'Tis the true discipline, the needed rod, Else I should live in vain!

The foe is strong,--his venomed rage I dread,
Yet, O my God, do thou his wrath restrain;
Shield me in battle, soothe my aching head
In the sharp hour of pain:

But more than this, oh give me toiling faith,
Large-hearted love, and zeal unto the death:
Let me not live in vain.

Restore to me the freshness of my youth,

And give me back my soul's keen edge again : Ah, let my spring return! bright hope and truth Shall I not you regain?

No wasted life, my God, shall mine now be,

Hours, days, and years filled up with toil for thee: I shall not live in vain!

VANITY.

Τα άληθως ἀγαθα οὐκ ἐστιν ἐν τῆ κατηραμενη γῆ.-ORIGEN

NAY 'tis not that we fancied it,

This magic world of ours;

We thought its skies were only blue,
Its fields all sun and flowers.

Its streams all summer-bright and glad,
Its seas all smiles and calms,

Its path from youth to age, one long

Green avenue of palms.

But clouds came up with glooom and shade

Our sky was overcast,

The hot mist threw its blight around,

Sunshine and flowers went past.

Hopes perished, that had hung like wreaths
Around youth's buoyant brow,

And joys, like withered autumn leaves,

Dropped from the shaken bough.

Yet from these clouds comes forth the light,Light beaming from on high;

And from these faded flowers spring up

The flowers that can not die.

Far fairer is the land we seek,
A land without a tomb,
An everlasting resting-place,
A sure and quiet home.

Far sunnier than the hills of time

Are its eternal hills;

Far fresher than the rills of earth

Are its eternal rills.

No blight can fall upon its flowers,

No darkness fill its air,

It has a day forever bright,
For Christ, its sun, is there.

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MACHPELAH.

O Sun of love and peace, arise,
Thy light upon us beam;
For all this life is but a sleep,

And all this world a dream.

MACHPELAH.

ONLY a tomb, no more!

A rock-hewn sepulchre,

And this, and this is all that's thine,
Fair Canaan's mighty heir!

Only a tomb, no more!

A future resting-place,

When God shall lay thee down, and bid
All thy long wanderings cease.

This cave and field,-no more,—
Canst thou thy dwelling call;

That land of thine,—plains, hills, woods,

streams,

The stranger has it all!

MACHPELAH.

Thy altar and thy tent

Are all that thou hast here:

With these content, thou passest on,
A homeless wanderer.

Thy life unrest and toil;
Thy course a pilgrimage;
Only in death thou goest down,
To claim thy heritage ;—

A heritage which death

Shall seal to thee for aye,

A resurrection-heritage

When all things pass away.

A home of endless peace,

Beyond these hills of strife;

When these old rocks give up their dead,

And death shall end in life.

A heritage of life,

Beyond this guarded gloom,

A kingdom, not a field or cave;

A city, not a tomb.

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