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Of tenderness and watchful care!

Sail forth into the sea, O ship!

Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip,

Are not the signs of doubt or fear.

Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'T is of the wave and not the rock ;
"T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee, are all with thee!

THE EVENING Star.

JUST above yon sandy bar,

As the day grows fainter and dimmer,

Lonely and lovely, a single star

Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

Into the ocean faint and far

Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

Chrysaor rising out of the sea,

Showed thus glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoë,

Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.

Thus o'er the ocean faint and far

Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly;

Is it a God, or is it a star

That, entranced, I gaze on nightly!

CURFEW.

SOLEMNLY, mournfully,

Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell

Is beginning to toll.

Cover the embers,

And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.

Dark grow the windows,
And quenched is the fire;
Sound fades into silence,-
All footsteps retire.

No voice in the chambers,

No sound in the hall!

Sleep and oblivion

Reign over all!

The book is completed,

And closed, like the day;

And the hand that has written it

Lays it away.

Dim grow its fancies;

Forgotten they lie;

Like coals in the ashes,

They darken and die.

Song sinks into silence,

The story is told,

The windows are darkened,

The hearth-stone is cold.

Darker and darker

The black shadows fall;

Sleep and oblivion

Reign over all.

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.

L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!"-JACQUES BRIDAINE.

SOMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.
Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw.
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all, ·

"Forever- never!

Never forever!"

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There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told, -
"Forever- never!

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From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night:
There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow;

And in the hush that followed the prayer,

Was heard the old clock on the stair,

"Forever never!

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