Scouts upon the mountain's peak-
Ye that see the Promised Land,
Hearten us! for ye can speak
Of the country ye have scanned,
Far away!
For the Father's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day.
WORK AND PRAY !
Pray! and work will be completer; Work! and prayer will be the sweeter; Love! and prayer and love the fleeter Will ascend upon their way.
Fear not lest the busy finger
Weave a net the soul to stay:
Give her wings-she will not linger;
Soaring to the source of day;
Cleaving clouds that still divide us
From the azure depths of rest,
She will come again! beside us,
With the sunshine on her breast;
Sit, and sing to us, while quickest
On their task the fingers move,
While the outward din wars thickest,
Songs that she hath learned above.
Live in Future as in Present;
Work for both while yet the day
Is our own! for lord and peasant,
Long and bright as summer's day,
Cometh, yet more sure, more pleasant,
Cometh soon our holiday;
Work away!
Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune!
Labor is rest-from the sorrows that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us;
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us;
Rest from world sirens that lure us to ill.
Work-and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work-thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow,
Work with a stout heart and resolute will!
Labor is health! Lo, the husbandman reaping,
How through his veins goes the life-current leaping!
How his strong arm in its stalwart pride sweeping,
True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides.
Labor is wealth—in the sea the pearl groweth;
Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon floweth.
From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth;
Temple and statue the marble block hides.
Droop not-though shame, sin, and anguish are round
thee!
Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee!
Look to the pure heaven smiling beyond thee!
Rest not content in thy darkness-a clod! Work for some good, be it ever so slowly! Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly! Labor! all labor is noble and holy;
Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God. -Francis S. Osgood.
HE opal-hued and many-perfumed morn
From gloom is born;
From out the sullen depth of ebon night
The stars shed light;
Gems in the rayless caverns of the earth Have their slow birth;
From wondrous alchemy of winter hours Come summer flowers;
THREE fishers went out into the w
HREE fishers went sailing out into the west
Each thought of the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep; 'And there's little to earn, and many to keep, Though the harbor bar be moaning.
Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down ; And they looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the rack it came rolling up, ragged and brown; But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning.
Three corpses lay on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down. And the women are watching and wringing their hands, For those who will never come back to the town; For men must work, and women must weepAnd the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep— And good-by to the bar and its moaning. -Charles Kingsley.
IS echoing axe the settler swung
Amid the sea-like solitude,
And, rushing, thundering, down were flung
The Titans of the wood;
Loud shrieked the eagle, as he dashed
From out his mossy nest, which crashed
With its supporting bough,
And the first sunlight, leaping, flashed
On the wolf's haunt below.
Rude was the garb and strong the frame
Of him who plied his ceaseless toil :
To form that garb the wildwood game
Contributed their spoil;
The soul that warmed that frame disdained
The tinsel, gaud, and glare that reigned
Where men their crowds collect ;
The simple fur, untrimmed, unstained,
This forest tamer decked.
The paths which wound 'mid gorgeous trees,
The stream whose bright lips kissed their flowers,
The winds that swelled their harmonies
Through those sun-hiding bowers,
The temple vast, the green arcade,
The nesting vale, the grassy glade,
Dark cave, and swampy
lair;
These scenes and sounds majestic made
His world, his pleasures, there.
His roof adorned a pleasant spot,
'Mid the black logs green glowed the gain, And herbs and plants the woods knew not Throve in the sun and rain.
The smoke wreath curling o'er the dell,
The low, the bleat, the tinkling bell,
All made a landscape strange,
Which was the living chronicle
Of deeds that wrought the change.
The violet sprung at spring's first tinge,
The rose of summer spread its glow,
The maize hung out its autumn fringe,
Rude winter brought his snow;
And still the lone one labored there,
His shout and whistle broke the air,
As cheerily he plied
His garden spade, or drove his share
Along the hillock's side.
-Alfred B. Street.
UT look! o'er the fall see the angler stand,
Swinging his rod with skillful hand;
The fly at the end of his gossamer line
Swims through the sun like a summer moth,
Till, dropt with a careful precision fine,
It touches the pool beyond the froth.
A-sudden, the speckled hawk of the brook
Darts from his covert and seizes the hook.
Swift spins the reel; with easy slip
The line pays out, and the rod, like a whip,
Lithe and arrowy, tapering, slim,
Is bent to a bow o'er the brooklet's brim,
Till the trout leaps up in the sun, and flings
The spray from the flash of his finny wings;
Then falls on his side, and, drunken with fright,
Is towed to the shore like a staggering barge,
Till beached at last on the sandy marge,
Where he dies with the hues of the morning light,
While his sides with a cluster of stars are bright.
The angler in the basket lays
His speckled prize, and goes his ways.
-Thomas Buchanan Read.
LEAR the brown path to meet his coulter's
gleam!
Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team,
With toil's bright dewdrops on his sun burnt brow,
The lord of earth, the hero of the plow!
First in the field before the reddening sun,
Last in the shadows when the day is done,
Line after line, along the bursting sod.
Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod;
Still where he treads the stubborn clods divide,
The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide;
Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves,
Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves;
Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train
Slants the long track that scores the level plain,
Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay,
The patient convoy breaks its destined way;
At every turn the loosening chains resound,
The swinging plowshare circles glistening round,
Till the wide field one billowy waste appears,
And wearied hands unbind the panting steers.
These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings
The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings;
This is the page whose letters shall be seen
Changed by the sun to words of living green;
This is the scholar whose immortal pen
Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men;
These are the lines that heaven commanded-toil
Shows on his deed-the charter of the soil!
O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast
Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest,
How thy sweet features, kind to every clime,
Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of Time!
We stain thy flowers-they blossom o'er the dead;
We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread;
O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn
Waves the green plumage of thy tassel'd corn;
Our maddening conflicts scar thy fairest plain,
Still thy soft answer is the growing grain.
Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms
Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms,
Let not our virtues in thy love decay,
And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away.
No, by these hills whose banners now displayed
In blazing cohorts autumn has arrayed;
And the mower now
Pauses and wipes his beaded brow.
A moment he scans the fleckless sky,
A moment, the fish-hawk soaring high,
And watches the swallows dip and dive
Anear and far;
They whisk and glimmer, and chatter and strive;
What do they gossip together?
Cunning fellows they are
Wise prophets to hive;
"Higher or lower they circle and skim, Fair or foul to-morrow's hay weather!" Tallest primroses or loftiest daisies
Not a steel-blue feather
Of slim wing grazes!
"Fear not! fear not!" cry the swallows.
Each mower tightens his snath ring's wedge,
And his finger daintily follows
The long blade's tickle-edge;
Softly the whetstone's last touches ring,
Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling!
WEAVER sat by the side of his loom
A WEAVER sat by the sidst
A-flinging the shuttle fast,
And a thread that would last till the hour of doom
Was added at every cast.
His warp had been by the angels spun,
And his weft was bright and new,
Like threads which the morning upraids from the sun,
All jeweled over with dew.
All fresh-lipped, bright-eyed, beautiful flowers
In the rich soft web were bedded;
And blithe to the weaver sped onward the hours,
Nor yet were Time's feet leaded.
But something there came slow stealing by,
And a shade on the fabric fell;
And I saw that the shuttle less blithely did fly;
For thought has a wearisome spell.
And the thread that next o'er the warp was lain
Was of a melancholy gray,
And anon I marked there a tear-drop's stain
Where the flowers had fallen away.
But still the weaver kept weaving on,
Though the fabric all was gray;
And the flowers, and the buds, and the leaves were gone
And the gold threads cankered lay.
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