66

THE DIVINITY.

"ES, write it in the rock!" Saint Bernard said,

"YES

"Grave it on brass with adamantine pen

'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when

God's wisdom and God's goodness are displayed,

!

For God of these his attributes is made.".
Well spake the impetuous Saint, and bore of men
The suffrage captive; now, not one in ten
Recalls the obscure opposer he outweighed.3

God's wisdom and God's goodness! - Ay, but fools Mis-define these till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness, they are God! what schools

Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore? This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules; 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID.

HE saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!

So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side

Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried : "Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,

"Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!"
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,
The infant Church; of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.

And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid

Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew;
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

AUSTERITY OF POETRY.

HAT son of Italy who tried to blow,*

THAT

Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sat with his bride to see a public show.

Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow
Youth like a star; and what to youth belong,
Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong.
A prop gave way! erash fell a platform ! lo,

'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay! Shuddering they drew her garments off, and found. A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin.

Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay,
Radiant, adorned outside; a hidden ground

Of thought and of austerity within.

EAST AND WEST.

N the bare midst of Anglesey they show

IN

Two springs which close by one another play, And, "Thirteen hundred years agone," they say, "Two saints met often where those waters flow.

"One came from Penmon, westward, and a glow
Whitened his face from the sun's fronting ray.
Eastward the other, from the dying day;
And he with unsunned face did always go."

Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark, men said.
The Seër from the East was then in light,
The Seër from the West was then in shade.

Ah! now 't is changed. In conquering sunshine bright The man of the bold West now comes arrayed;

He of the mystic East is touched with night.

66

"Ο

MONICA'S LAST PRAYER.

COULD thy grave at home, at Carthage, be!"Care not for that, and lay me where I fall. Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call.

But at God's altar, O, remember me!

Thus Monica, and died in Italy.

Yet fervent had her longing been, through all
Her course, for home at last, and burial
With her own husband, by the Libyan sea.

Had been; but at the end, to her pure soul
All tie with all beside seemed vain and cheap,
And union before God the only care.

Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole; Yet we her memory, as she prayed, will keep, Keep by this: Life in God, and union there!