POSSESSION

God gave me thee, nor all the world's alarms
Shall take thee, sweet, one moment from my arms.
He tuned our souls in unison divine.

Through Time, Eternity, did name thee mine.
Ne'er fear that anything on earth could make
Me lose the heart that my own heart did wake.
Thy heart is mine, and thy dear self I hold
Within my arms, that close about thee fold;
Nor let the tempests of the world come nigh,
To waft across thy warm red lips one sigh.
With all my worldly love, I thee endow,
We are no longer twain, but one; and now
Give me thy lips, and all the world forget,
Give me thine eyes that like twin stars are set
Beneath the fragrant cloud of thy soft hair,

Thine eyes, Dear Heart, that all the world calls fair,
Not even knowing of the look that lies

Within their depths, for me alone, nor ever dies.

"I saw at morn, when the Maidens Dread Came forth ere the battle to choose the slain."

No song was so sweet and no star so bright

As the Dream of the Nazarene;

From Virgin's bosom to Calvary's height

It sang and it shone serene.

THE DEED IS THE MAN.-James C. McNally.

THE BIBLE

It seems as if to the feet of the sacred writers the mountains had brought all their gems, and the sea all its pearls, and the gardens all their frankincense, and the spring all its blossoms, and the harvests all their wealth, and heaven all its glory, and eternity all its stupendous realities; and that since then poets and orators and painters had been drinking from an exhausted fountain and searching for diamonds amid realms utterly rifled and ransacked.

Oh! this book is the hive of all sweetness, the armory of all well-tempered weapons, the tower containing the crown jewels of the universe, the lamp that kindles all other lights, the home of all majesties and splendors, the stepping-stone on which heaven stoops to kiss the earth with its glories, the marriage-ring that unites the celestial and the terrestrial, while all the clustering white-robed multitudes of the sky stand round to rejoice at the nuptials. This book is the wreath into which are twisted all garlands, the song into which hath struck all harmonies, the river of light into which hath poured all the great tides of hallelujahs, the firmament in which all suns and moons and stars and constellations and galaxies and immensities and universes and eternities wheel and blaze and triumph.

Where is the youth with music in his soul who is not stirred by Jacob's lament, or Nathan's dirge, Habbakkuk's dithyrambic, or Paul's march of the resurrection, or St. John's anthem of the ten thousand times ten

thousand doxology of elders on their faces, answering to the trumpet blast of archangel, with one foot on the sea and the other on the land, swearing that time shall be no longer?

In the latter part of the Psalms we see David gathering together a great choir, standing in galleries above each other; beasts and men on the first gallery; above them hills and mountains; above them fire and hail and tempest; above them sun and moon and stars of light; until on the highest round he arrays the host of angels. And there, standing before this vast multitude, reaching from the depths of earth to the heights of heaven, like the leader of great orchestra, he lifts his hands, crying: "Praise ye the Lord. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord."

And all earthly creatures in their song, and mountains with their waving cedars, and tempests in their thunder and rattling hail, and stars on all their trembling harps of light, and angels on their thrones respond in magnificent acclaim:

"Praise ye the Lord.

"Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord."

Behold in this book faultless rhythm and bold imagery and startling antithesis and rapturous lyric and sad elegy and sweet pastoral and instructive ballad and devotional psalm; thoughts expressed in style more solemn than that of Montgomery, more bold than that of Wordsworth, more impassioned than that of Pollok, more tender than that of Cowper, more weird than that of Spenser. Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage.