The drops of mercy choosing as they part

The dark or glowing side.

One kindly deed may turn

The fountain of thy soul To love's sweet day-star, that shall o'er thee burn

Long as its currents roll!

The pleasures thou hast planned,

Where shall their memory be
When the white angel with the freezing hand ?

Shall sit and watch by thee?

Living, thou dost not live,

If mercy's spring run dry; What Heaven has lent thee wilt thou freely give,

Dying, thou shalt not die !

HE promised even so!

To thee His lips repeat, —
Behold, the tears that soothed 4 thy sister's woe

Have washed thy Master's feet!

3. – THE LIVING TEMPLE.

Not in the world of light alone,
Where God has built his blazing throne,

Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen:
Look in upon thy wondrous frame,
Eternal wisdom still the same!

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,
Whose streams of brightening purple rush,
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current 3 steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.

No rest that throbbing slave 4 may ask,
For ever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 5
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.

But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,

Its living marbles 1 jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the Master's own.

See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light,
Yet in those lucid globes 3 no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling, round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear
With music it is heaven to hear.

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds ; 4
That feels sensation's faintest thrill,
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells !
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads ! 5

1 Its living marbles, etc. That 4 the cloven sphere ... folds. is, the bony framework, and more By this figurative expression is specially the spinal column. Ex- meant, of course, the brain, which plain what is meant by “glistening is “cloven” or divided by the lonband” and “silvery thong." gitudinal fissure into two hemi

2 seeming white light. spheres, irregularly marked by conWhite reflects to the eyes all the volutions (“' folds”). rays of the spectrum combined. 5 its hollow glassy threads.

3 lucid globes: that is, the eyes. Explain.

O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms,
And mold it into heavenly forms!

4. – THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE.

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,2
That was built in such a logical way 3
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it – Ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a alp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.3

Now, in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, -
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still
Find it somewhere you must and will, -
Above or below, or within or without,
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.

But the Deacon swore (as deacons do, With an “I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou "), He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn't break daown. -“Fur,” said the Deacon, " 't's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;

1 Lisbon-town ... down. In so brown." Would this colloquialthe great earthquake of Lisbon ism be suitable in a serious poem? (Nov. 1, 1755), about forty thousand 3 It was ... shay. Note the persons lost their lives, and most droll effect produced by making of the city was destroyed.

the completion of the “one-hoss 2 Braddock's... brown. Brad-shay" coincident in time with condock's defeat took place July 9, vulsions of nature and the shock 1155. Explain the metaphor“done of armies.