O LORD! turn not thy face away
From them that lowly lie,
Lamenting sore their sinful life
With tears and bitter cry!
Thy mercy-gates are open wide
To them that mourn their sin;
Oh shut them not against us, Lord,
But let us enter in!
We need not to confess our fault,
For surely Thou canst tell;
What we have done, and what we are,
Thou knowest very well:
Wherefore, to beg and to entreat,
With tears we come to Thee,
As children that have done amiss
Fall at their father's knee.
And need we then, O Lord! repeat
The blessing which we crave,
When Thou dost know, before we speak,
The thing that we would have?
Mercy, O Lord!-mercy we seek
This is the total sum!
For mercy, Lord! is all our prayer,—
Oh, let Thy mercy come!
OH, the merry May has pleasant hours,
And dreamily they glide,
As if they floated like the leaves
Upon a silver tide,
The trees are full of crimson buds,
And the woods are full of birds,
And the waters flow to music,
Like a tune with pleasant words.
The verdure of the meadow-land
Is creeping to the hills,
The sweet, blue-bosom'd violets
Are blowing by the rills;
The lilac has a load of balm
For every wind that stirs,
And the larch stands green and beautiful Amid the sombre firs.
There's perfume upon every wind
Music in every tree—
Dews for the moisture-loving flowers—
Sweets for the sucking bee:
The sick come forth for the healing South,
The young are gathering flowers;
And life is a tale of poetry,
That is told by golden hours.
It must be a true philosophy,
That the spirit, when set free,
Still lingers about its olden home,
In the flower and the tree,
For the pulse is stirr'd as with voices heard
In the depth of the shady grove,
And while lonely we stray through the fields
The heart is answering love.
FAIR flower, that shunn'st the glare of day,
Yet lov'st to open, meekly bold,
To evening's hues of sober gray,
Thy cup of paly gold;
Be thine the offering owing long
To thee, and to this pensive hour,
Of one brief tributary song,
Though transient as thy flower.
I love to watch, at silent eve,
Thy scatter'd blossoms' lonely light,
And have my inmost heart receive
The influence of that sight.
I love at such an hour to mark
Their beauty greet the night-breeze chill, And shine, 'mid shadows gathering dark, The garden's glory still.
For such, 'tis sweet to think the while,
When cares and griefs the breast invade,
Is friendship's animating smile
In sorrow's dark'ning shade.
Thus it bursts forth, like thy pale cup,
Glist'ning amid its dewy tears,
And bears the sinking spirit up
Amid its chilling fears.
But still more animating far,
If meek Religion's eye may trace, Even in thy glimmering earth-born star, The holier hope of Grace.
The hope, that as thy beauteous bloom
Expands to glad the close of day,
So through the shadows of the tomb
May break forth Mercy's ray.
BERNARD BARTON, 18
How still the morning of the hallow'd day!
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd
The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yester-morn bloom'd waving in the breeze.
Sounds the most faint attract the ear-the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating midway up the hill.
Calmness seems throned on yon unmoving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village broods;
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man,
Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And, as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls,
His iron-arm'd hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
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