But hush!-the one absorbing thought
Transfigures all the passing scene,
And makes the present time forgot
In musing what the past has been:-

Here patriarchs lived, here prophets trod,
Here angels on their errands sped;
The home of sainted men of God,
The resting-place of holy dead!

More wondrous still:-on these same hills
The eye of God incarnate fell;

He walked these paths, He drank these rills,
He sat Him by yon wayside well.

Oft by that Kedron brook He heard
The rustle of its olives gray,
Or carol of the matin-bird
Which greeted the first eastern ray.

In Temple court or noisy street,
When wearied with the wrangling cry,
How oft he found a calm retreat
In thee, thrice-hallowed Bethany:
Watching the evening shadows fall,
Or glow of sunbeam from the west,
Transmuting Moab's mountain-wall
Into a blaze of amethyst.

Or thou, Gennesaret! favoured lake,
How fragrant with His presence still:
The deeds of love-the words He spake
Graved on thy shores indelible!

Thy green hills oft were altar-stairs
Up which his weary footsteps trod,
For morning praise and midnight prayers,
Away from man, alone with God.

He loved the flowers which fringed thy sca,
He trod thy groves of stately palm,

Thy carpets of anemone,

Thy vine-clad hills, and bowers of balm.

Enough. With kindred interest teems
Each scene, where'er I gaze around:
The land throughout a Bethel seems,
And "every place is hallowed ground."

Adieu! each shrine of holy thought.
Each ruined heap-each storied “Tel.”
Forget-me-not,"
I pluck the last "
And now I take a fond farewell!

To-night, on Hermon's northern brow,
The stars upon our tents shall shine;
Set up the stone! record the vow!
"Forget thee, never-Palestine!"

The lifelong wish and dream to see
Thy blessed acres, God has given:
A lingering tear I drop to thee,
Thou earthly vestibule of heaven!

NATURE'S HYMN.

Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord."-Psalm cl. 6.

Praice Him, O praise Him, ye ministering seraphim!

Praise ye Jehovah enthroned on high:
Awake every harp, ye archangels, and tell of
Him

Shrouded in glory, yet graciously nigh.

Praise Him, bright sun, in the glow of thy splendour;

Praise Him, thou moon, silver queen of the night;

Ye stars, who like virgin retainers attend her, O praise the great Lord who hath robed you with light!

Praise Him, O praise Him, ye soft-flowing fountains,

Amid the lone valleys go murmur your song: Uplift the loud anthem, ye thunder-voiced mountains,

Let peak answer peak and re-echo the song!

Ye forests--ye need no cathedral of marble, No Thurifer's censer to perfume your shrine; Your own winged choirs will His praises best warble,

Your woodland flowers scatter sweet incense divine!

For you I grieve, but for myself I only can rejoice:

Oh, do not weep-for short the time our parting is to be:

We shall meet in the City of the
Crystal Sea.

"I hoped to live for longer years, and even now I seem

At times to think this death-bed is but a passing dream:

bunch of holly berrics, and my plant of maiden hair;

hood's sunny years,

I never liked to hear this earth miscalled a vale of tears.

As winter came and winter went, I never seemed to tire,

keepsakes sent by me,

When I've left you for the City of the Crystal Sea.

"Oh! often have I thought, too, when not so strong as now,

fire;

on your brow,

to be revealed; Yes, all that now is dark to us, we then shall clearly see,

In the light of the City of the
Crystal Sea.

"When first upon a couch of pain my throbbing head was laid,

That God might raise me up again, how fervently I prayed;

But He, perhaps, foresaw too well the briar and the thorn,

Which might, like other wand'ring sheep, my straying feet have torn;

Too surely would His wisdom know, that with a longer life

I might have proved unequal for the battle and the strife,

And therefore the unanswered prayer was all in love to me,

So He took me to the City of the
Crystal Sea.

Fore and aft to gunwale freighted With the old, the weak, the poor,

Hither came on Christ's behest,
Taught and toiled, and when was ended
Life's long labour, here found rest;
And all ages since have followed
To the ground his grave hath blessed.

Up the long glen narrowing
Inland from the eastern deep,
In the kirkyard o'er the river,
Where dead generations sleep,
Living men on summer Sabbaths
Worship long have loved to keep.

There o'er graves lean lichened crosses,
Placed long since by hands unknown,
Sleeps the ancient warrior under
The blue claymore-sculptured stone,
And the holy well still trickles
From rock basin, grass-o'ergrown.

Lulled the sea this Sabbath morning,
Calm the golden-misted glens,
And the white clouds upward passing
Leave unveiled the azure Bens,
Altars pure to lift to heaven
Human hearts' unheard amens.

And the folk are flowing
Both from near and far, enticed
By old wont and reverent feeling
Here to keep the hallowed tryst,
This calm sacramental Sabbath,
Far among the hills, with Christ.

Dwellers on this side the country
Take the shore-road, near their doors,
Poor blue-coated fishers, plaided
Crofters from the glens and moors,
Fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters,
Hither trooping, threes and fours.

Plaids were there that only Sabbath
Saw, and wives' best tartan hoods,
Grannies' white coifs, and bareheaded
Maidens with their silken snoods;
Many-hued, home-woven tartans,
Brightening these grave solitudes.

You might see on old white horses
Agèd farmers slowly ride,
With their wives behind them seated,
And the collie by their side;
While the young folk follow after,
Son and daughter, groom and bride.

There a boat or two is coming
From lone isle or headland o'er,
Many more, each following other,
Slowly pull along the shore,

The bowed down, the lame, the palsied, Those with panting breath opprest, Widows poor, in mutch and tartan Cloak, for one day lent them, drest, And the young and ruddy mother, With the bairnie at her breast.

And the western shores Atlantic, All the rough side of Kintyre,

Send small bands since morn, far-travelled
O'er hill, river, moss, and mire,
Down the mountain shoulders moving
Toward this haven of their desire.

Sends each glen and hidden corry,
As they pass, its little train,

To increase the throng that thickens
Kirkward, like the growing gain
From hill burns, which some vale-river
Broadening beareth to the main.

While the kirkyard throng and thronger
Groweth, some their kindred greet;
Others in lone nooks and corners
To some grass-grown grave retreat,
There heed not the living, busy
With the dead beneath their feet.

Here on green mound sits a widow,
Rocking crooningly to and fro,
Over him with whom so gladly
To God's house she used to go;
There the tears of wife and husband
Blend o'er a small grave below.

There you might o'erhear some old man,
Palsied, speaking to his son,

"See thou underneath this headstone
Make my bed, when all is done.
There long since I laid my father,
There his forebears lie, each one."

They too, all a kindly household From morn-gladdened Kilmahoe,

Steek their door, and maid and mistress
Toward the Sabbath gathering go,
Lady lone, and four fair daughters,
By the lulled sea murmuring low.

Upward from the shingly sea-beach,
By the long glen's grassy road,
First the white-haired lady mother,
Then the elder sisters, trode,
Last came Moira fair, and Marion,
All their spirits overawed.