HYMN, The heavens, O Lord! thy power proclaim, Thy hand the comet's orbit drew, flower that light receives, THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. GROUP after group are gathering—such as prest Once to their Savior's arms, and gently laid Their cherub heads upon his shielding breast, Though sterner souls the fond approach forbade ;Group after group glide on with noiseless tread, And round Jehovah's sacred altar meet, Where holy thoughts in infant hearts are bred, And holy words their ruby lips repeat, Oft with a chasten'd glance, in modulation sweet. Yet some there are, upon whose childish brows Wan poverty hath done the work of care ; Look up, ye sad ones ! 't is your Father's house Beneath whose consecrated dome you are ; More gorgeous robes ye see, and trappings rare, And watch the gaudier forms that gaily move, And deem, perchance, mistaken as you are, The "coat of many colors” proves His love, Whose sign is in the heart , and whose reward above. And ye, blest laborers in this humble sphere, To deeds of saint-like charity inclined, Who from your cells of meditation dear Come forth to guide the weak, untutor’d mindYet ask no payment, save one smile refined Of grateful love-one lear of contrite pain! The rest of earthly Sabbaths.-Be your gain BETTER MOMENTS. My mother's voice! how often creep Its accents o'er my lonely hours ! Or dew to the unconscious flowers. While leaping pulses madly fly; Her gentle tones come stealing by, Of what I have been taught to be. My manliness hath drunk up tears, a aburi And there's a mildew in the lapse Of a few miserable years- I have been out at eventide Beneath a moonlit sky of spring, And night had on her silver wing- And waters leaping to the light, With wilder fleetness, throng'd the night; With friends on whom my love is flung, Like myrrh on winds of Araby, Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung. Flung over me its golden chain, Like the light dropping of the rain, Then, as on childhood's bended knee, That our eternity might be I have been on the dewy hills, When night was stealing from the dawn, And tints were delicately drawn With a slow murmur in the trees, Upon the whisper of the breeze, And when the sun sprang gloriously Were catching upon wave and tree I say a voice has thrilled me then, Or, creeping from the silent glen Hath stricken me, and I have press'd And pouring forth the earliest, Have felt my mother's spirit rush And yielding to the blessed gush Have risen up—the gay, the wild- TO A FRIEND, WHO COMPLAINED THAT SHE HAD NOT A HOME. Sad and slow was the wanderer's tread, |