THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE EVANESCENT.

O golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!

The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream :

The sunshine and the very air

Seem of old time, and take me there.

THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE EVANESCENT.

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time."-Ecclesiastes ini. 11.

I PRAISED the earth in beauty seen,
With garlands gay of various green;
I praised the sea whose ample field
Shone glorious as a silver shield;
And earth and ocean seemed to say,
"Our beauties are but for a day!"

I praised the sun, whose chariot rolled
On wheels of amber and of gold;
I praised the moon, whose softer eye
Gleamed sweetly through the Summer sky;
And moon and sun in answer said,
"Our days of light are numbered !”

O God! O Good beyond compare !
If thus Thy meaner works are fair;
If thus Thy bounties gild the span
Of ruined earth and sinful man ;
How glorious must the mansion be

Where Thy redeemed shall dwell with Thee!

143

THE REAPERS.

"The harvestman gathereth the com, and reapeth the ears with his arm." Isaiah xvii. 5.

Soon as the morning trembles o'er the sky.
And, unperceived, unfolds the spreading day;
Before the ripened field the reapers stand
In fair array, each by the lass he loves,
To bear the rougher part, and mitigate,

By nameless gentle offices, her toil.

At once they stoop, and swell the lusty sheaves ;
While through their cheerful band the rural talk,
The rural scandal, and the rural jest,

Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time,
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.

Behind, the master walks, builds up the shocks,
And, conscious, glancing oft on every side
His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their sparing harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husbandman! but fling
From the full sheave, with charitable stealth,
The liberal handful. Think, oh! grateful think!
How good the God of harvest is to you,
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields,
While these unhappy partners of your kind
Wide-hover round you, like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole.

SOFT as a cloud is yon blue ridge-the mere
Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear,
And motionless; and, to the gazer's eye,
Deeper than ocean, in the immensity
Of its vague mountains and unreal sky!

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