The dullest or most noxious, should exist

Divorced from good, a spirit and pulse of good,

A life and soul, to every mode of being
Inseparably linked. Then be assured

That least of all can aught, that ever owned
The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime
Which man is born to, sink, howe'er depressed,
So low as to be scorned without a sin;
Without offence to God cast out of view
Like the dry remnant of a garden flower
Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement
Worn out and worthless.

THE MORAL LAW.

ALL true glory rests,

All praise of safety, and all happiness,

Upon the moral law. Egyptian Thebes,

Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves,
Palmyra central in the desert, fell!

And the arts died by which they had been raised.
Call Archimedes from his buried tomb

Upon the plain of vanished Syracuse,
And feelingly this age shall make report
How insecure, how baseless in itself,
Is that philosophy, whose sway is framed
For mere material instruments : - how weak

Those arts, and high inventions, if unpropped
By virtue.

ODE TO DUTY.

STERN daughter of the voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love,
Who art a light to guide, a rod

To check the erring, and reprove ;
Thou, who art victory and law

When empty terrors overawe,

From vain temptations dost set free,

And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye

Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely

Upon the genial sense of youth:

Glad hearts! without reproach or blot;

Who do thy work and know it not:

Long may the kindly impulse last!

But thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast!

Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,

When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.

And they a blissful course may hold,
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,

Live in the spirit of this creed;

Yet find that other strength, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried,
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,

Too blindly have reposed my trust:
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred

The task, in smoother walks to stray;

But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,

Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;

But in the quietness of thought:
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires;
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair

As is the smile upon thy face;

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And Fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power!

I call thee; I myself commend

Unto thy guidance, from this hour;
O, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;

And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!

THE SOUL'S RECUPERATIVE ENERGIES.

As men from men

Do, in the constitution of their souls,
Differ, by mystery not to be explained;
And as we fall by various ways, and sink
One deeper than another, self-condemned,
Through manifold degrees of guilt and shame,
So manifold and various are the ways
Of restoration, fashioned to the steps
Of all infirmity, and tending all
To the same point, attainable by all,

Peace in ourselves and union with our God.

John Milton.

1608-1674.

SPIRITUAL POPULATION OF THE UNIVERSE.

NOR think, though men were none,

That Heaven would want spectators, God want praise.
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
All these with ceaseless praise His works behold,
Both day and night. How often from the steep
Of echoing hill or thickets have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or responsive to each other's note,
Singing their great Creator! Oft in bands,
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds
In full harmonic numbers joined, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven.

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