SONGS IN DARKNESS.

"Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness."

NOT yet, O friend! not yet :

The patient stars

Lean from their lattices content to wait :
All is illusion till the morning bars

Slip from the levels of the eastern gate.

Night is too young, O friend! day is too near, Wait for the day that maketh all things clear— Not yet, O friend! not yet.

Not yet, O friend! not yet:

All is not true;

All is not ever as it seemeth now;

Soon shall the river take another blue,

Soon dies yon light upon the mountain brow;
What lieth dark, O love! bright day will fill;
Wait for thy morning, be it good or ill-
Not yet, O love! not yet.

BRET HARTE.

WE

E see by night's sweet showing,
Grandly revealed,

What day concealed,

Ten thousand streams of glory flowing,
That never cease to flow:

But only night can show

What lavish light God is bestowing.

ALEXANDER R. THOMPSON, D.D.

I

HEARD the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air

My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there-From those deep cisterns flows.

LONGFELLOW.

A

RAVELED rainbow overhead

Lets down to Life its varying thread,—
Love's blue, joy's gold, and fair between,
Hope's shifting light of emerald green :
While either side, in deep relief,

A crimson Pain, a violet Grief!
Would'st thou amid their gleaming hues
Clutch after those, and these refuse?
Believe! as thy beseeching eyes

Follow their lines and sound the skies,
There, where the fadeless glories shine,
An unseen Angel, twists the twine.
And be thou sure, what tint soe'er
The sunbeam's broken rays may wear,
It needs them all, that broad and white,
God's love may weave the perfect light.

MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.

EAR night! this world's defeat;

check and curb;

The day of spirits: my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb !

Christ's progress and his prayer-time;

The hours to which high heaven doth chime.

Were all my loud, evil days,

Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,

Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice Is seldom rent ;

Then I in heaven all the long year

Would keep and never wander here.

There is in God, some say,

A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.

Oh for that night! where I in Him

Might live invisible and dim !

HENRY VAUGHAN, 1621.

PEAK to us out of midnight's heart,

Sok to uforever meepless art!

The thoughts of Night are still and deep;
She doth thy holiest secrets keep.

The voices of the Day perplex;
Her crossing lights mislead and vex;
We trust ourselves to find thy way,

Or, proudly free, prefer to stray.

The Night brings dewfall, still and sweet,
Soft shadows fold us to thy feet;

Thy whisper in the dark we hear :

"Soul, cling to me! none else is near."

LUCY LARCOM, IN "JANUARY."

HE birds have hushed their chorus;

TH

Stars, through the twilight soft,
Will soon be glimmering o'er us ;-
The moon's aloft.

Hand in hand, let us hold together,
Through the dark and starlit weather.

The little flowers are sleeping;

The sun is out of sight.

God have us in his keeping

All through the night!

To-morrow let us fare together,

Still onward through the changing weather.

A. M., IN "THE QUIVER."

VER us, patient and changeless and far

O'shines eternity's star!

FRANCIS L. MACE.

L

O! the marvelous contrast of shadow and light,—
Of shadows that darken and lights that adorn,

And after the day comes the shadowy night,

And after the night come the splendors of morn.