NOW AND THEN.

ROAMING through the silent forest, climbing up the mountain wild,

Days long past rise up before me till I am again a child,

And I track the ever-widening current of my boyish life
On from innocence and gladness, onward into care and strife.

And a wild impetuous longing comes upon my sorrowing heart,
Loathing of a world of sadness, longing, longing to depart,

As upon the lonely traveller wandering through an Eastern land,

When the fiery vault around him burns above the burning sand.

Dreary seems the hollow world,-a world from which all truth has fled,

Where the Few roll on in splendour, where the Many want for bread.

Where our toiling struggling brothers, men for whom a God has died,

Crush'd by tyrants, void of knowledge, fall uncared-for side by side.

Where the strong man sells his ebbing life-blood for his daily food,

For the earth is ruled by Money, nor is Virtue understood.

Where the glittering child of fashion, in her wealth and beauty blest,

Dances on in careless gladness, little recking for the rest.

While the poor down-trodden work-girl yields before the golden spell,

And the tempters sin-bought money drags her beauty-curst to hell.

Truth is but a fond illusion, life is nought but empty show, And our God sits calm above us smiling at a world of woe.

Then a still and gentle whisper from my inner spirit came, 'God is God: He never changeth: Truth is not an idle name.

"Look above thee, look around thee, look on mountain, lake and wood,

"How they lie in peaceful beauty since He first said 'All is good.'

"What though now the care-worn peoples' struggle sadly on the Earth,

"They shall have a great Hereafter, they shall have another birth.

"Up and tell the toiling nations of the Great, the Good, the True;

"Tell them of the coming Judgement;-here is work for thee to do.

"For the phoenix-earth triumphant from its ashes shall arise, "And the just unite upon it in a love that never dies."

GOING HOME.

O day of joy, that out of sorrow,
And sorrowing days, art seen afar;
And shinest like a guiding star,
And dost from hope sweet lustre borrow.

How wilt thou bring to me the bliss
Of friendly eyes and voices sweet;
And my own home, that waiting is;
And merry faces me to meet.

And touches soft of hands that give,

Of lips that speak, a welcome true; That will go ringing, while you live, For aye, for aye, sweet tunes in you.

O day of joy, O light that gleamest
Across the mist of sorrowing days;
That leadest me thro' gloomiest ways,
And evermore a haven seemest.

"A."

END OF VOL. I.

W. METCALFE, PRINTER, GREEN STREET, CAMBRIDGE.