In vain the stern Tyrant affailed

With threats of the dungeon or grave ;— He spoke but the word, and the timid ne'er quailed In pangs that had mastered the brave. The babe hath endured, while its frame With the scourge and the torture was torn The maiden, the mother, in chariots of flame, To glory triumphant were borne.

For what were thy terrors, O Death?

And where was thy triumph, O Grave? When the vest of pure white and the conquering wreath,

Were the prize of the scorned and the flave? Oh! then to our Father was given,

To read the bright vifions on high;

He gave to our view the full glories of Heaven;We heard and we haftened to die.

Some died-they are with thee above;

Some live-they lament for thee now;

But who would recall thee, blest Saint, from the love

That circles with glory thy brow? Long, long didft thou linger below,

But the term of thine exile is o'er;

And praises shall mix with the tears that must flow
From the eyes that behold thee no more.

Praise-praise that thy trials are past!
Joy-joy-that thy triumph is won!

The thrones are completed-for thine is the laft
Of the twelve that encircle the Son!

O Lord! fhall the time not be yet

When thy church fhall be bleffed and free?

Thou who canft not forfake, and who will not for

get,

Come quickly-or take us to Thee !

Dale.

LIX.

MIDNIGHT CHIMES.

NELL of departed years,

Thy voice is fweet to me;

It wakes no fad foreboding fears,
Calls forth no fympathetic tears,
Time's reftlefs course to fee.
From hallowed ground

I hear the found,

Diffufing through the air a holy calm around.

Thou art the voice of Hope,

The mufic of the spheres,
A fong of bleffings yet to come;
A herald from my future home
My foul delighted hears.

By fin deceived,

By nature grieved,

Still am I nearer heaven than when I firft believed.

Thou art the voice of Love,
To chide each doubt away;
And as the murmur faintly dies,
Vifions of past enjoyment rise
In long and bright array.
I hail the fign,

That Love Divine

Will o'er my future path in cloudless glory fhine.

Thou art the Voice of Life,

A found which feems to say,
O prifoner in this gloomy vale,

Thy flesh may faint, thy heart may fail,
Yet fairer fcenes thy spirit hail,

Which fhall not pass away.

Here grief and pain

Thy fteps detain;

There, in the image of thy Lord, fhalt thou with Jefus reign.

བའང་

LX.

THE MILLENNIUM.

WHAT a bright and bleffed world
This groaning earth of ours will be,
When from its throne the tempter

hurled,

Shall leave it all, O Lord, to Thee!

But brighter far that world above,

When we, as we are known, fhall know;
And, in the fweet embrace of love,
Reign o'er this ranfom'd earth below.

O bleffed Lord! with weeping eyes,

That blissful hour we wait to fee; While every worm or leaf that dies, Tells of the curfe and calls for Thee.

Come, Saviour, then o'er all below,
Shine brightly from thy throne above;
Bid Heaven and Earth thy glory know,
And all creation feel thy love.

SIR E. DENNY.

LXI.

THE MILLENNIUM.

HE groans of Nature in this nether world,

Which Heaven has heard for ages, have an end;

Foretold by prophets, and by poets

fung,

Whofe fire was kindled at the prophets' lamp;
The time of reft, the promised Sabbath, comes.
Six thousand years of forrow have well-nigh
Fulfill'd their tardy and difaftrous courfe
Over a finful world; and what remains

Of this tempeftuous ftate of human things,
Is merely as the working of a fea

Before a calm, that rocks itself to reft:

For He, whose car the winds are, and the clouds
The duft that waits upon his fultry march,

When fin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,
Shall vifit earth in mercy; fhall defcend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love;
And what His ftorms have blafted and defaced
For man's revolt, fhall with a fmile repair.

Cowper.

Wake up

LXII.

HEAVEN.

IS the foft hour of Eve,- the fummer's fun

Hath funk in fmiling lovelinefs to

reft;

His latest beams, faft fading one by one, a crimson glory in the Weft;

As if through openings in its portals riven,

A gleam of burfting blifs had won its way from Heaven.

At fuch an hour as this, the penfive foul,

Entranced in thought, unfolds for flight fublime, Her immaterial wings, and spurning all

The narrow boundaries of space and time, Feels that immortal ftrength which God has given, And knows her true relationship with Heaven.