They are friends,

Bound here to meet me, and behold the last

Of our devoted city. Look, oh Christians!

Still the Lord's house survives man's fallen dwellings, And wears its ruin with a majesty

Peculiar and divine. Still, still it stands,

All one wide fire, and yet no stone hath fallen.

The awe-struck shout of the unboasting conqueror. Hark-hark!

It breaks it severs-it is on the earth.

The smother'd fires are quench'd in their own ruins :
Like a huge dome, the vast and cloudy smoke
Hath cover'd all.

And it is now no more,
Nor ever shall be to the end of time,
The Temple of Jerusalem!Fall down,
My brethren, on the dust, and worship here
The mysteries of God's wrath.

Even so shall perish,

In its own ashes, a more glorious Temple,

Yea, God's own architecture, this vast world,
This fated universe-the same destroyer,

The same destruction-Earth, Earth, Earth behold!
And in that judgment look upon thine own!

HYMN.

Even thus amid thy pride and luxury,
Oh Earth! shall that last coming burst on thee,
That secret coming of the Son of Man.
When all the cherub-throning clouds shall shine,
Irradiate with his bright advancing sign:

When that Great Husbandman shall wave his fan, Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away: Still to the noontide of that nightless day,

Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain.

Along the busy mart and crowded street,
The buyer and the seller still shall meet,

And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain:
Still to the pouring out the Cup of Woe;
Till Earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro,
And mountains molten by his burning feet,

And Heaven his presence own, all red with furnace heat.
The hundred-gated Cities then,

The Towers and Temples, nam'd of men
Eternal, and the Thrones of Kings;

The gilded summer Palaces,

The courtly bowers of love and ease,

Where still the Bird of pleasure sings;
Ask ye the destiny of them?

Go gaze on fall'n Jerusalem!

Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll,

'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurl'd, The skies are shrivell'd like a burning scroll,

And the vast common doom ensepulchres the world.
Oh! who shall then survive?

Oh! who shall stand and live?
When all that hath been, is no more:
When for the round earth hung in air,
With all its constellations fair

In the sky's azure canopy;

When for the breathing Earth, and sparkling Sea,
Is but a fiery deluge without shore,

Heaving along the abyss profound and dark,

A fiery deluge, and without an Ark.

Lord of all power, when thou art there alone
On thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne,

That in its high meridian noon

Needs not the perish'd sun nor moon:

When thou art there in thy presiding state,

Wide-sceptered Monarch o'er the realm of doom:
When from the sea-depths, from earth's darkest womb,

The dead of all the ages round thee wait:

And when the tribes of wickedness are strewn
Like forest leaves in the autumn of thine ire!
Faithful and True! thou still wilt save thine own:
The Saints shall dwell within th' unharming fire,
Each white robe spotless, blooming every palm.
Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side,
So shall the Church, thy bright and mystic Bride,
Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm.
Yes, 'mid yon angry and destroying signs,
O'er us the rainbow of thy mercy shines,
We hail, we bless the covenant of its beam,
Almighty to avenge, Almightiest to redeem !

THE VISIONARY.

(From Poems, by one of the Authors of "Poems for Youth, by a Family Circle.")

I have been lonely, even from a child;
Tho' bound with sweet ties to a happy home,
With all life's sacred charities around me;
I have been lonely-for my soul had thirst
The waters of this world could not assuage:
I found them bitter, and I had high dreams,
And strange imaginations-yea, I liv'd
Amid my own creations; and a world
Of many hopes and raptures was within me,
Such as I could not tell of; for I knew
Such feelings could not bear a sympathy;
They were too sacred to admit communion,
Too blest to need it-to the fields and woods
Did my heart's fulness pour them ; solitude
Was the expansion of my secret visions,
When I could ask my soul to tell me all,
And many a bright and blessed reverie

Hath cheer'd my wanderings; I have heard sweet music
In my own thoughts; mysterious harmonies,

Felt, but not understood; vague, happy musings,

And shadowy sketches of my future fate,

In young and glowing colours. Are they faded?
Years are gone by; and once again I commune
With my own spirit-It is passionless,
And silent now, its loveliest visions over;
And yet I do not shun this scrutiny.

Tho' I have fed my heart with perishing joys,
They have not been in vain; for those wild hopes
And noble aims, and all those proud aspirings,
Gave me a loftier being. I have plung'd
Within the maddening wave, unaw'd, to succour
An object of my love. I have stood calm
In danger's fiercest moment, with a trust
Above all mortal peril. I have wander'd
O'er moors and mountains to assuage the woes
Of human kind. In all that could excite
I have been foremost :-then have woke and wept
To feel how little and how weak I was.-

HYMN.

(From Croly's "Sebastian.")

Open ye gates of peace, receive the bride,
In beauty come to pledge her virgin vow.

Oh! not with mortal thoughts those cheeks are dyed,
Those downcast eyes not touch'd with mortal woe;
Her's are the thoughts that light the seraph's glow,
When, veiling his bright forehead with his plume,
He lays before the throne his chaplet low.
Daughter of princes, heir of glory, come!
Open ye gates of peace. She triumphs o'er the tomb.

Come, beautiful, betrothed! The bitter sting
Of hope deferr'd can reach no bosom here,
Here life is peace, unwreck'd by dreams that spring
From the dark bosom's living sepulchre.

At these high gates die sorrow, sin, and fear.
Woe to the heart where passion pours its tide;

Soon sinks the flood to leave the desart there;

Here love's pure stream with hues of heaven is dyed.

Come, stainless spouse. Ye gates of peace receive the bride!

FINIS.

INDEX.

[N. B. The figures within crotchets refer to the pages of the History; the others to
those of the Chronicle, Appendix to ditto, and extracts.]