Mother! watch the little heart

Beating soft and warm for you;
Wholesome lessons now impart;

Keep, O! keep that young heart true
Extricating every weed,

Sowing good and precious seed,

Harvest rich you then may see

Ripening for eternity.

THE MOTHERLESS.

MRS. WELBY.

Thou art not mine-upon thy sweet lips linger
Thy mothers smile

And while I press thy soft and baby fingers
In mine the while

In the deep eyes, so trustfully upraising
Their light to mine

I deem the spirit of thy mother gazing
To my soul's shrine.

*They ask me, with their meek and soft beseeching, A mother's care

They ask a mother's kind and patient teaching
A mother's prayer;

Not mine- yet dear to me-fair fragrant blossom

Of a fair tree

Crush'd to the earth in life's first glorious sum mer----
Thou'rt dear to me.

Child of the lost, the buried, and the sainted,
I call thee mine

Till fairer still, with tears and sin untainted
Her home be thine.

FAITH.

Ye who think the truth ye sow
Lost beneath the winter's snow,
Doubt not, Time's unerring law
Yet shall bring the genial thaw..
God in Nature ye can trust;
Is the God of Mind less just?

Read we not the mighty thought
Once by ancient sages taught?
Though it withered in the blight
Of the mediaval night,

Now the harvest we behold;
See! it bears a thousand fold.

Workers on the barren soil,
Yours may seem a thankless toil

Sick at heart with hope deferred,
Listen to the cheering word:
Now the faithful sower grieves,
Soon he'll bind his golden sheaves.

If Great Wisdom have decreed
Man must labor, yet the seed
Never in this life shall grow,

Shall the sower cease to sow?
The fairest fruit may yet be borne
On the resurrection inorn.

THE SOWER TO HIS SEED.

FROM THE GERMAN.

Sink, little seed, in the earth's black mould,
Sink in your grave so wet and so cold
There must you lie ;

Earth I throw over you,
Darkness must cover you,

Light comes not nigh.

What grief you'd tell, if words you could say! What grief make known for loss of the day! Sadly you'd speak :

"Lie here must I ever?

Will the sunlight never

My dark grave seek?"

Have faith, little seed; soon yet again

Thoul't rise from the grave where thou art lain Thoul't be so fair,

With thy green shades so light,

And thy flowers so bright,

Waving in air.

So must we sink in the earth's black mould ;

Sink in the grave so wet and so cold;

There must we stay;

Till at last we shall see

Time turn to eternity,

Darkness to day.

DELIGHT IN GOD ONLY.

FRANCIS QUARLES.

I love (and have some cause to love) the earth; She is my Maker's creature; therefore good She is my mother, for she gave me birth;

She is my tender nurse she gives me food;

But what's a creature, Lord, compared to thee?
Or what's my mother, or my nurse to me?

I love the air ; her dainty sweets refresh

My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me; Her shrill-mouth'd choir sustains me with their

flesh,

And with their polyphonian notes delight me: But what's the air or all the sweets that she Can bless my soul withal, compared to Thee?

I love the sea: she is my fellow-creature,

My careful purveyor she provides me store; She walls me round; she makes my diet greater § She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore: But, Lord of oceans, when compared with thee, What is the ocean, or her wealth to me?

To heaven's high city I direct my journey,

Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye; Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,

Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky: But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee? Without thy presence heaven's no heaven to me.

Without thy presence earth gives no refection; Without thy presence, sea affords no treasure; Without thy presence, air's a rank infection;