SWEET DAY, SO COOL, SO CALM, SO BRIGHT.

SWEET Day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,

Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,

For thou must die.

Sweet Rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses;
A box where sweets compacted lie;

My music shows you have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives,

But when the whole world turns to coal

Then chiefly lives.

HERBERT.

SABBATH IN THE COUNTRY.

It is not only in the sacred fane

That homage should be paid to the Most High : There is a temple, one not made with hands,— The vaulted firmament; far in the woods,

Almost beyond the sound of city chime,

At intervals heard through the breezeless air;
When not the limberest leaf is seen to move,
Save where the linnet lights upon the spray;
When not a floweret bends its little stalk,

Save where the bee alights upon the bloom;
There, rapt in gratitude, in joy and love,
The man of God will pass the Sabbath noon :
Silence his praise, his disembodied thoughts,
Loosed from the load of words, will high ascend
Beyond the empyrean.

Nor yet less pleasing at the Heavenly Throne,
The Sabbath service of the shepherd boy.
In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled
To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill,
Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry,
Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son,
Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold;

And wonders why he weeps. The volume closed,
With thyme sprig laid between the leaves, he sings
The sacred lays, his weekly lesson conned
With meikle care beneath the lowly roof,
Where humble lore is learned, where humble worth
Pines unrewarded by a thankless state.
Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen,
The shepherd-boy the Sabbath holy keeps,
Till, on the heights, he marks the straggling bands
Returning homeward from the house of prayer.

GRAHAME

HYMN OF THE CITY.

NoT in the solitude

Alone may man commune with heaven, or see Only in savage wood

And sunny vale the present Deity,

Or only hear His voice

Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.

Even here do I behold

Thy steps, Almighty !-here, amidst the crowd
Through the great city rolled,

With everlasting murmur, deep and loud,
Choking the ways that wind

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.

Thy golden sunshine comes

From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies, And lights their inner homes;

For them Thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, And givest them the stores

Of ocean,

and the harvest of its shores.

Thy spirit is around,

Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along; And this eternal sound

Voices and footfalls of the numberless throngLike the resounding sea,

Or, like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee.

And when the hours of rest
Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine,
Hushing its billowy breast,

The spirit of that moment too is Thine;
It breathes of Him who keeps

The vast and helpless city while it sleeps.

BRYANT,

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.*

NOVEMBER chill blows loud with angry sugh; The shortening winter day is near a close;

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The blackening trains of crows to their repose; The toil-worn cotter frae his labor goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does homeward bend,

At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

The expectant wee things, todlin, stacher thro' To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise and glee. His wee bit ingle blinkin' bonnily,

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does all his weary, carking cares beguile, And make him quite forget his labor and his toil.

Belyve the elder bairns come dropping in, At service out among the farmers roun';

Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin A cannie errand to a neebor town;

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown,
In youthful bloom, love sparkling in her e'e,
Comes home, perhaps to show a braw new gown,
Or déposite her sair-won penny fee,

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

Wi' joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet, An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers;

The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears; The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view.

The mother, with her needle and her shears,

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new ;

The father mixes a' with admonition due.

Their master's an' their mistress's command The younkers all are warned to obey,

An' mind their labors with an eydent hand, And ne'er, though out of sight, to jauk or play; "An' O! be sure to fear the Lord alway!

An' mind your duty duly morn an' night !— Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray,