Swathed the sky of my own native land with a shroud,
When lightnings gleamed fiercely, and thunderbolts rung,
How proud to the tempest those pinions were flung!
Though the wild blast of battle swept fierce through the air
With darkness and dread, still the eagle was there;
Unquailing, still speeding, his swift flight was on,
'Till the rainbow of Peace crowned the victory won.
Oh, that eagle of Freedom! age dims not his eye,
He has seen Earth's mortality spring, bloom, and die!
He has seen the strong nations rise, flourish, and fall;
He mocks at Time's changes, he triumphs o'er all:
He has seen our own land with wild forests o'erspread,
He sees it with sunshine and joy on its head;

And his presence will bless this, his own chosen clime,
Till the archangel's fiat is set upon time.

Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, D. D.

THE CHIMES OF ENGLAND.

HE chimes, the chimes of Motherland,

THE

Of England, green and old,

That out from fane and ivied tower

A thousand years have tolled;
How glorious must their music be

As breaks the hallowed day,
And calleth with a seraph's voice
A nation up to pray!

Those chimes that tell a thousand tales,

Sweet tales of olden time!

And ring a thousand memories
At vesper, and at prime;
At bridal and at burial,

For cottager and king

Those chimes—those glorious Christian chimes,

How blessedly they ring!

Those chimes, those chimes of Motherland,

Upon a Christmas morn, Outbreaking, as the angels did,

For a Redeemer born;
How merrily they call afar,

To cot and baron's hall,
With holly decked and mistletoe,
To keep the festival!

The chimes of England, how they peal
From tower and Gothic pile,
Where hymn and swelling anthem fill
The dim cathedral aisle ;

Where windows bathe the holy light

On priestly heads that falls,

And stain the florid tracery

And banner-dighted walls!

And then, those Easter bells, in Spring,

Those glorious Easter chimes; How loyally they hail thee round,

Old queen of holy times! From hill to hill, like sentinels, Responsively they cry,

And sing the rising of the LORD,

From vale to mountain high.

I love ye, chimes of Motherland,
With all this soul of mine,

And bless the LORD that I am sprung
Of good old English line!
And, like a son, I sing the lay

That England's glory tells;
For she is lovely to the LORD,
For you, ye Christian bells!

And heir of her ancestral fame,
And happy in my birth,
Thee too I love, my forest-land,
The joy of all the earth;

For thine thy mother's voice shall be,

And here where GOD is King—

With English chimes, from Christian spires,

The wilderness shall ring.

OLD CHURCHES.

HAST been where the full-blossomed bay-tree is blowing,

With odours like Eden's around?

Hast seen where the broad-leaved palmetto is growing,
And wild vines are fringing the ground?

Hast sat in the shade of catalpas, at noon,

And ate the cool gourds of their clime;

Or slept where magnolias were screening the moon,
And the mocking-bird sung her sweet rhyme?

And didst mark in thy journey, at dew-dropping eve,
Some ruin peer high o'er thy way,

With rooks wheeling round it, and bushes to weave
A mantle for turrets so gray ?

Did

ye ask if some lord of the cavalier kind

Lived there, when the country was young?
And burned not the blood of a Christian, to find
How there the old prayer-bell had rung?

And did ye not glow when they told ye-the LORD
Had dwelt in that thistle-grown pile;

And that bones of old Christians were under its sward,
That once had knelt down in its aisle ?

And had ye no tear-drops your blushes to steep

When ye thought-o'er your country so broad,
The bard seeks in vain for a mouldering heap,
Save only these churches of God!

O ye that shall pass by those ruins agen,
Go kneel in their alleys and pray,

And not till their arches have echoed "Amen!"
Rise up, and fare on in your way;

Pray God that those aisles may be crowded once more,
Those altars surrounded and spread,

While anthems and prayers are upsent as of yore,
As they take of the wine-cup and bread.

Ay, pray on thy knees, that each old rural fane
They have left to the bat and the mole,
May sound with the loud-pealing organ again,
And the full swelling voice of the soul.
Peradventure, when next thou shalt journey thereby,
Even-bells shall ring out on the air,

And the dim-lighted windows reveal to thine eye
The snowy-robed pastor at prayer.

Park Benjamin.

GOLD.

"GOLD is, in its last analysis, the sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave."-JOSEPH NAPOLEON.

ASTE treasure like water, ye noble and great!

WA

Spend the wealth of the world to increase your estate; Pile up your temples of marble, and raise

Columns and domes, that the people may gaze
And wonder at beauty, so gorgeously shown
By subjects more rich than the king on his throne.
Lavish and squander-for why should ye save
"The sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave !"

Pour wine into goblets all crusted with gems-
Wear pearls on your collars and pearls on your hems;
Let diamonds in splendid profusion outvie

The myriad stars of a tropical sky!

Though from the night of the fathomless mine
These may be dug at your banquet to shine,

Little care ye for the chains of the slave,

"The sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave."

Behold, at your gates stand the feeble and old-
Let them burn in the sunshine and freeze in the cold;
Let them starve: though a morsel, a drop will impart
New vigour and warmth to the limb and the heart:
You taste not their anguish, you feel not their pain,
Your heads are not bare to the wind and the rain-
Must wretches like these of your charity crave

"The sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave?”