THE following poem is put into the mouth of a dying Missionary, whose life has fallen a sacrifice to his exertions for the spread of Christianity in Africa.

The truth of the circumstances supposed has been too frequently and sadly attested by experience. May the anticipations expressed be speedily approved by as certain but more cheering evidence!

This Poem was inscribed to the President and Members of the Church Missionary Society; which contemplated amongst its first objects the amelioration of the spiritual condition of Africa; and to this it has steadily persevered in giving its best energies, under great difficulties and discouragements.

ETHIOPIA

STRETCHING OUT HER HANDS UNTO

GOD.

Not for the brightness of a mortal wreath,-
Not for a place midst kingly minstrels dead,—
But that perchance a faint gale of Thy breath,
A still small whisper in my song, hath led
One struggling spirit upward to Thy throne,
Or but one hope, one prayer,-for this alone
I bless thee, O my God!

THE DYING POET'S HYMN. (MRS. HEMANS.)

HATH the day broke? I heard a gentle warning
Whisper my soul, "Joy cometh in the morning!"
Lo, Heaven unbars her portals, dimly grand;

The night is well-nigh spent! the glorious day's at hand!

Death!-is this death, so sweetly stealing on?

Death the Destroyer, Sin's portentous son?

This he, who speeds on messages of wrath
Where the blue lightning tracks his blasted path;
The spectral rider, 'neath whose pale steed's tread
The earthquake rouses from his sulphury bed;
Who lends the charging van his stormy shout,
Or screams vindictive o'er the maddening rout,
Or wrapped in putrid vapours dank and dense
Walks silent with the midnight pestilence?

To me he comes with morning,—with the hour
That wakes the woodland, and that opes the flower;
Like some celestial form he moves along,
Ushered by Beauty, heralded with song;

The sunshine floats around him like a vest,
He wears the day-star on his radiant breast;
And a voice warbles in the south wind's breath,
Wooing my weary soul-the voice of Death!

My wife! my precious wife! how well beloved, Time, peril, pain have long and sternly proved! It comes―the parting pang-it comes apace! Turn not those tear-worn eyes upon my face, Suing for leave to hope,—it may not be! My God-our God hath set the spirit free: Yet bleeds my human heart, and ill can bear

Thy passive grief, thy calm and still despair;

For many a night, albeit thou deem'dst me sleeping,

I felt thy silent agony of weeping.

Come, sit thee down beside me; let me rest

My dying head upon thy gentle breast;
Oh, yet a little longer! hand in hand,

Before the sunny hills of Westmoreland,

Whose forms e'en now with heavenly visions blend,
Frostwick, and Rainsborough, and Ling-mell-end,1
'Mid those dear haunts our careless childhood trod,
We pledg'd us to each other and to God.
Since then, submissive to his high decree,

"In perils of the desert and the sea,