Why waste your treasures of delight
Upon our thankless, joyless sight;
Who, day by day, to sin awake,
Seldom of heaven and you partake?

Oh! timely happy, timely wise,
Hearts that with rising morn arise!
Eyes that the beam celestial view,

Which evermore makes all things new!

New every morning is the love

Our wakening and uprising prove;

Through sleep and darkness safely brought, Restored to life, and power, and thought.

New mercies, each returning day,
Hover around us while we pray;

New perils past, new sins forgiven,

New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.

If on our daily course our mind

Be set, to hallow all we find,

New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,

As more of heaven in each we see :

L

Some softening gleam of love and prayer Shall dawn on every cross and care.

As for some dear familiar strain
Untired we ask, and ask again,
Ever, in its melodious store,
Finding a spell unheard before;

Such is the bliss of souls serene
When they have sworn, and stedfast mean,
Counting the cost, in all to espy
Their God, in all themselves deny.

O! could we learn that sacrifice,
What lights would all around us rise!
How would our hearts with wisdom talk
Along life's dullest, dreariest walk!

We need not bid for cloister'd cell,
Our neighbour and our work farewell,
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky :

The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask:
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God.

Seek we no more; content with these,
Let present Rapture, Comfort, Ease,
As heaven shall bid them, come and go :-
The secret this of rest below.

Only, O Lord, in thy dear love
Fit us for perfect rest above;
And help us, this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray.

THE RAINBOW.

Campbell.

TRIUMPHAL arch, that fill'st the sky

When storms prepare to part,

I ask not proud Philosophy

To teach me what thou art.

Still seem, as to my childhood's sight,

A midway station given,

For happy spirits to alight

Betwixt the earth and heaven.

Can all that optics teach, unfold

Thy form to please me so,

As when I dream'd of gems

Hid in thy radiant bow?

and gold

When science from creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,

What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws!

And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams,
But words of the Most High,
Have told why first thy robe of beams
Was woven in the sky.

When o'er the green undeluged earth Heaven's covenant thou didst shine, How came the world's grey fathers forth To watch thy sacred sign!

And when its yellow lustre smiled

O'er mountains yet untrod, Each mother held aloft her child, To bless the bow of God.

Methinks, thy jubilee to keep,
The first-made anthem rang

On earth delivered from the deep,

And the first poet sang.

How glorious is thy girdle cast

O'er mountain, tower, and town, Or mirror'd in the ocean vast,

A thousand fathoms down.

As

As fresh in yon horizon dark,
young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.

For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,

Nor lets the type grow pale with age,
That first spoke peace to man.

THE CAST-AWAY.

Cowper.

OBSCUREST night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roar'd,
When one who little thought to die,
Washed headlong from on board,

Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.