Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings, as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What, though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What, though no real voice or sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing, as they shine,
"The hand that made us is divine."
JOSEPH ADDISON.

1712.

LOVE TO GOD.

The scriptural reference in the following hymn is to Habakkuk iii. 17, 18.

PRAISE to God, immortal praise,
For the love that crowns our days!
Bounteous source of every joy,
Let thy praise our tongues employ.

For the blessings of the field,
For the stores the gardens yield;
For the vine's exalted juice,
For the generous olive's use;

Flocks that whiten all the plain;
Yellow sheaves of ripened grain ;
Clouds that drop their fattening dews;
Suns that temperate warmth diffuse:
All that Spring with bounteous hand
Scatters o'er the smiling land;
All that liberal Autumn pours
From her rich o'erflowing stores :

These to thee, my God, we owe,
Source whence all our blessings flow;
And for these my soul shall raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise.

Yet, should rising whirlwinds tear
From its stem the ripening ear;
Should the fig-tree's blasted shoot
Drop her green, untimely fruit;

Should the vine put forth no more,
Nor the olive yield her store;
Though the sickening flocks should fall,
And the herds desert the stall;

Should thine altered hand restrain The early and the latter rain; Blast each opening bud of joy, And the rising year destroy ;

JAMES WARLEY MILES, a clergyman of the Protestan Episcopal Church, was born in South Carolina in 1818, and died in Charleston, August, 1875. For some time he was Professor of the History of Philosophy and Greek Literature in the College of Charleston, and he was also attached for a few years to Bishop Southgate's Mission to the Eastern Christians at Constantinople, but was obliged to return from abroad on account of ill-health. He thereafter devoted himself to the study of philology, preaching occasionally. He was at the time of his death in temporary charge of Grace Church, Charleston. His hymns were written to be read in connection with his sermons. Some of them have, however, been printed.

BEHOLD how nature is with teaching rife! — Man threads the wild, mysterious desert, where,

Midst seeming boundless space, come here and there

Flitting inhabitants, awakening life But for a moment round some palm-fringed well,

Then vanishing like a dream, leaving all drear
And suddenly desolate, as though the spell
Here
Of silence never had been broken.
Earth's scenic shifting flees, and only God is

near.

Man climbs the marvellous mountain, with its deep,

Rich-foliaged gorges, and its ever steep
And steeper rising precipices dread,
Until o'erhead,

In still, ethereal solitude, appears
Its granite peak, which awfully uprears
Its inaccessible form, as bearing meet
Kindred to stars that proudly still retreat.
The stars look down on the vain mountain's
love,

And man, o'er mount and stars, soars up to
God above.

On some vast stream man floats in silent night, Hearing in awful hush

The river's mighty rush,

And marking how the rays from heaven's gemmed light

Are in the sweeping flood absorbed and broken;

And there he knows the token

That all his shattered aims, his hopes bewept, Are in God's counsels deep and fathomless onswept.

Ocean! great image of eternity,

And yet of fleeting time, of change, unrest,
Thou vast and wondrous realm of mystery,
Of thy great teachings too is man possessed.
Type of God's boundless might, the here and
there

Uniting, thou dost with a righteous fear
Man's heart ennoble, awe, and purify,

As in thy mighty, multitudinous tones echoes of God roll by.

Before the dread volcano's fiery might,
Over the earthquake's dizzy surge, man cowers

FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the English poet, was born in 1770, and graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1791. He published two brief poems the next year, with reluctance, and continued to write during the remainder of his life. His efforts were met with ridicule at first, but he has since been recognized as the foremost poet of nature and human life of his generation. He was poet-laureate after the death of Southey, and died on the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, April 23, 1850.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,

Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pygmy size!
See, where mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human
life,

Shaped by himself with newly learned art,

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral,

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

He sees it in his joy.

The youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid.
Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!