In summer noons and in autumn nights
It warned the vessel of hidden woes;
And its weariless toll, in the fog and dark,
Kept faithful watch as it fell and rose.

Its clang of duty, now faint and far,

Now sharp and loud on the angry wave,
For twelve long months has sounded out

Like a passing bell o'er a sailor's grave.

But its brazen tongue is glad this morn
As it swings and rings on the sunlit bay;
Is it trying to tell us that Christ was born
Far over the wave on Christmas Day?

PEACE.

If sin be in the heart,

The fairest sky is foul, and sad the summer weather,
The eye no longer sees the lambs at play together,
The dull ear cannot hear the birds that sing so sweetly,
And all the joy of God's good earth is gone completely,
If sin be in the heart.

If peace be in the heart,

The wildest winter storm is full of solemn beauty,

The midnight lightning-flash but shows the path of duty,
Each living creature tells some new and joyous story,

The very trees and stones all catch a ray of glory,
If peace be in the heart.

CHARITY.

Whatever be the sin that grieves my sight,
Whatever wrong I struggle to make right,
Of sin and wrong more grievous I must fall,
If charity I show not first of all;
Shall God or man have charity for me
When I, poor soul, refuse it unto thee?

But if, when sin and woe I strive to heal,

The grace of charity I soonest feel.

Then Christ's rebuke, not mine, my life shall show,
For he shall walk beside me where I go,
And God and men have charity for me,
Since I, poor soul, bestow it upon thee.

Edgar Hoster Davis.

Rev. Edgar F. Davis was born in East Machias, April 17, 1851. He was Principal of the Thomaston High School from 1871 to 1873, having graduated from Bowdoin in the class of 1871. From 1873 to 1876 he was also engaged in teaching, out of the State. He studied theology at the Yale Theological School from 1876 to 1878. Was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church in Perry, Aug 8, 1878, and dismissed by council, June 3, 1879. After supplying the Congregational Church in Calais two months, in the fall of the year, 1879, he was settled over the Congregational Church in St. Stephen, N. B. In 1881 he received a call to the Congregational Church in Gardiner, where he remained till Jan. 1, 1888, when he accepted a call from the Congregational Church at Wolfboro, N. H., and immediately began his labors there. Mr. Davis was married in 1874 to Miss Elmira S. Talbot, daughter of Hon. S. H. Talbot, of East Machias,

DOMINIE M'LAUREN.

In a narrow street and lonely of a little Scottish town,
Dwelt a preacher of the gospel, in a cottage, old and brown.

Long this faithful under-shepherd had his flock with manna fed;
Long the tender lambs protected and in fertile pastures led.
And, like all his race before him, dealt severe and telling blows,
Not on Satan's kingdom only, but on all sectarian foes.

But to-night his work is ended, and the Dominie at last
Lies upon his dying pillow, feels the life-tide ebbing fast:

While beside his couch a grandchild seeks with loving hand to soothe
All the old man's dying anguish, all the darkening path to smooth.
Suddenly upon the maiden turns the hoary saint his eyes,
From whose depths a light mysterious gleams like star from polar skies.
"Daughter, I have warred a warfare lang and tireless and severe,
In my preaching and my praying, 'gainst a' ither churches here.
"A' my days I've stoutly striven for the doctrines auld and sweet,
Fierce anathemas I've uttered 'gainst the folk out-owre the street.
"But the street I now am treading, daughter, has nae sides ava,
Far beyond my een it reaches, bounded by nor curb nor wa’.
"O could I my life live over here upon this barren shore,
I'd preach purity o' doctrine less, and purity o' life far more!"
Smiled the other as she softly took in hers the clay-cold hand,
"Are you heretical becoming as you near the heavenly land ?"
"Little matters it," he whispered, "names hae not the olden sound
O' severity and terror that I've aften in them found.

"And since I hae lain here lanely day by day upon my cot,

Aft ae still, sma' voice has spoken things with holy sweetness fraught; "Telling me that a' our wranglings over doctrines here below Will for aye be silenced in that Kingdom whereunto I go.

"And as Love makes a' men brithers-when I enter in at last

I shall find the place far roomier than I thought in times by-past.”

Weaker grew his voice, and fainter fell the falt'ring words and slow; Sank the weary head forever, closed the eyes to all below.

And as tearfully the maiden saw the light go out at last,

Bending low she heard him murmur: "Than I thought in times by-past.”

Samuel Valentine Cole.

Rev. Samuel V. Cole was born in Machiasport, Dec. 29, 1851, and in the autumn following his graduation at Bowdoin College, (1874) he was appointed tutor in rhetoric in that institution, where he remained one year. He then became principal of the classical department of the High School at Bath, which position he continued to hold until the summer of 1877, when he was appointed instructor in Latin in Bowdoin. He continued in that position until 1881, in the fall of which year he accepted an appointment as teacher in the Greylock Classical Institute, at South Williamstown, Mass. He married, in April, 1880, Miss Annie Talbot, of East Machias. Since his resignation at Greylock Institute, Mr. Cole has graduated at the Theological Seminary, Andover, Mass., and, with his wife, is now traveling for a year in Europe. His literary work has been largely a recreation, though successfully pursued, and consists of translations, essays, bookreviews and poems. His longest polished poem was published in the Atlantic Monthly in November, 1884, occupying four pages.

THE CITY OF THE VIOLET CROWN.

He is dead and gone, with his wonderful skill,
The poet who once by a sound

Made boulder and birch-tree dance to his will,
And a city arise from the ground.

One night, where the haunted Cephissus pours
Its shrunken wave to the sea,

Some flute-notes, wafted along the shores,
Were the same as Amphion's to me.

For they build thee again in my quiet dreams,

O city of the Violet Crown;

As silent as rises the mist from the streams

Thy walls rose over the town.

On the gleaming height where the Partheon lay
Like a beautiful changeless cloud

Stood the maiden-goddess arrayed for the fray,
Majestic, and silent, and proud.

Her brazen shield in the sunlight shone

Far out on the trembling blue,

As a welcoming star, as a sign well-known
To the home-returning crew.

The seals were broken on urn and grave,
And many a vanished face

Was seen once more in the living wave
Of the street or the market-place.
But all the while it was envious Death
Still masking; the vision of peace
Became as a fabric upheld by a breath,-
I feared that my fluter would cease.
Ill-omened fear! That moment I found
The faces beginning to pass;

All faded as phantoms fade under ground
When the dawn breathes over the grass.

The dawn had risen, the broken spell
I could not recover then;

Time's withering glance on thy temples feil,
And thou wert a ruin again.

Nay, not all ruin! In air and sky,

In thy old historic hill,

A sense of something that cannot die

There lingered, and lingers still;

A gleam of the light that forever will be

On all the nations afar,

Like the trail that falls over the summer sea

At the set of the Titan star.

O well to remember the deeds and days

Of thy past, handed silently down,

While the sun on thy forehead of mountains lays, Fair city, the Violet Crown.

"THE STAFF AND THE TREE."
This grew a sapling on the mountain side,
Nature had willed it to become a tree;
I cut it down, and in that moment's pride
I slew the glorious thing it was to be.

It might have risen to imperial height

And gladdened with its beauty all the hill,—With bowers of green, and spaces sweet with light, Where birds might build and dwell and sing at will. 'Tis now a staff. Yet, when the years grow brief, And you would share with it your weight of cares— When life is putting on the yellow leaf,

A miracle will happen unawares.

For you will hear the birds that never sang
Within its unborn branches; you will see
The leaves that never rustled lightly hang

Their banners forth-your staff will tower a tree;

And it will be the sun and wind and dew

Of other days by which that tree is made;
Then, if you call, a friendly ghost or two

May come and sit beside you in its shade!

Annie Maria Libby.

Miss Annie M. Libby, the daughter of a Free Baptist clergyman, was born in Brunswick, Me., in 1851, and began to teach school at an early age, and was also a contributor, both in prose and verse, to several publications, receiving five dollars for a short story, when fifteen years old. In 1882 she accepted a position on the staff of the Lewiston Journal, and later went to Europe, and wrote letters for the Lewiston Journal and the Journal of Education, becoming, on her return, editorially connected with the latter paper. Miss Libby's poems have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Portland and Boston Transcripts, the Illustrated Christian Weekly, and various other publications. She is also a regular contributor to the Chautauquan.

HIDDEN FORCES.

She watched the winding brook steal from the shade

Of sombre pines where it had loitered long,

And, leaving all its dusky ambuscade,

Run down the sunny slope with laugh and song.

"O happy brook," she sighed, "dost not regret
Within that gloomy copse thy lingering?"

The brook laughed low: "In that dark wood are set,'
It said, "the springs that give me strength to sing."

POVERTY-GRASS.

Grown on that sterile cliff for centuries,

Wind-swept by chilling blasts from ocean wave,
Hast thou thine aspirations, too, dost crave

Like human hearts, impossibilities ?

Dost tremble at the dull roar of the seas

Chanting death-songs above the drowned man's grave?
Dost vainly sigh for fields where glad brooks lave

The violet's feet and murmur melodies

Unto the nesting birds,-where wild vines drift
Down fragrant lanes o'erhung with golden fruits,—
Where summer's happy roses bud and blow?

O pallid weed, close clasped in granite rift,
The strength and sweetness hidden at thy root,
The lush green meadow-grasses never know.