66 'REJOICE WITH TREMBLING."

Suggested by a sermon preached in Canterbury Cathedral by the late Dean Alford; and written at Dover.

Ο

'ER the hushed wave the sloping sunbeam glows,

And gilded sails play idly with the breeze,

No cloud from heaven a stain of darkness throws,
But all combines with spotless peace to please.
And when the sun hath ceased to shine on these,
The rising moon her argent smile will show,
Drawing the charmed beholder to his knees
To worship Him Whose hand doth all bestow.
Oh! ye, whose hearts such calm of surface know,
As can the mirror to this picture form,
"Rejoice with trembling"--'tis not always so;
For interwove with Life are pain and storm, [blow,
When hearts must ache, ships toss, and tempests
Till God and Heaven seem lost to things below!

Sunday, May 8, 1859.

"THE POETRY OF ASTRONOMY."

To Stella.

OUBT not my soul is deeply wrapt in thine,

DOU

Whose vision colours every thought by day,
And in the darkness bears a double sway,
Provoking me to dream thou may'st be mine.
Oh! why should stars that so remotely shine
Move us to worship, though their very ray
Warn that their charms are all so far away,
That fruitless Love can only live to pine.
But wherefore thus? Away this fond despair!
Hope views with joy the renovating light

Of thy sweet constellation shining there, [night;
While gazing heavenward through my doubting
And tells that thou my primary shalt be,
And I, thy planet, live and move by thee.

THE GROTTO OF LOURDES.

Catholic Reflections.

LL who profess to bow before a throne

ALL

Whereof ye must avow man nothing knows, Blame not as blind this worship here, but own From full-blown sacred sentiment it flows; If Reason's half 'gainst reasoning minds ye close, And praise, half prostrate only, an Unknown, This crowd that all its trusting headlong throws In blind Devotion is far stauncher shown. Nor fondly deem that ye shall not be blamed, Who, damning Reason half, yet wield her knife. To prune where Reason shrinks, as half ashamed, Bleeding away for her Faith's very life.

Bastard believers! blush before this sight,

Wear Faith's whole fetters, or renounce her quite.

CAUTERETS.

THE MOUNTAIN.

IS morn, but on the misty mountain's brow

TIS

The rising sun no golden ray can shed;

While all is brilliant in the vale below,

Darkness and cold are lowering o'er his head.
E'en thus, in early life, hearts that are led
Too soon by towering hopes and visions fine,
With mists of doubt and thought long cumberèd,
See all the humbler spirits smile and shine.
Struggle, brave heart! and as thy day wears on
The brightest of the glow shall still be thine.
When from the lowly valleys it hath gone,
Around thy brows alone it shall incline :

Thy force of thought shall fling thy mists away,
And shining heaven concede its crowning ray.

CAUTERETS.

THE CLOUD.

OON as the cloud escapes the mountain's brow,

SOON

Swift it regains its pristine sphere on high; Free from earth's bonds, it rides in summer's glow, Sails on the breeze, rejoicing in the sky.

Such have appeared to me the minds that lie,

Cold and encumbered with established dread

Of merely counterfeit authority,

That chains them down in dark, subdued and dead.
These, when the pouring warmth of Reason's ray
Dissolves their bonds at last, and they expand,
Then they arouse, and tear themselves away,
Scorning the sterile tyrants of the land,

Aid and delight mankind, as clouds that rise
Water the valleys and adorn the skies.