My Darling's Shoes.

God bless the little feet that can never go astray,

For the little shoes are empty in the closet laid away; Sometimes I take one in my hand, forgetting till I see, It is a little half-worn shoe not large enough for me; And all at once I feel a sense of bitter loss and pain,

As sharp as when, two years ago, it cut my heart in twain. O little feet, that wearied not, I wait for them no more,

For I am drifting on the tide, but they have reached the shore; And while the blinding tear-drops wet these little shoes so old, They walk unsandalled in the streets that pearly gates enfold; And so I lay them down again, but always turn to say,

"God bless the little feet that now surely cannot stray."

And while I am thus standing, I almost seem to see

Two little forms beside me, just as they used to be,Two little faces lifted, with their sweet and tender eyes,

Ah, me! I might have known that look was born of Paradise. I reach my arms out fondly, but they clasp the empty air;

There's nothing of my darlings but the shoes they used to wear.

Oh the bitterness of parting can ne'er be done away

Till I see my darlings walking where their feet can never stray.
When I no more am drifting upon the surging tide,
But with them safely landed upon the river side;

Be patient, heart, while waiting to see their shining way,
For the little feet, in the golden street, can never go astray.

Unwritten Music.

There is unwritten music. The world is full of it. I hear it every hour that I wake; and my waking sense is surpassed sometimes by my sleeping, though that is a mystery. There is no sound of simple nature that is not music. It is all God's work, and so harmony. You may mingle, and divide, and strengthen the passages of its great anthem; and it is still melody,-melody.

The low winds of summer blow over the waterfalls and the brooks, and bring their voices to your ear, as if their sweetness were linked by an accurate finger; yet the wind is but a fitful

player; and you may go out when the tempest is up, and hear the strong trees moaning as they lean before it, and the long grass hissing as it sweeps through, and its own solemn monotony over all; and the dimple of that same brook, and the waterfall's unaltered bass shall still reach you, in the intervals of its power, as much in harmony as before, and as much a part of its perfect and perpetual hymn.

There is no accident of nature's causing which can bring in discord. The loosened rock may fall into the abyss, and the overblown tree rush down through the branches of the wood, and the thunder peal awfully in the sky;) and sudden and violent as these changes seem, their tumult goes up with the sound of wind and waters, and the exquisite ear of the musician can detect no jar.

I have read somewhere of a custom in the Highlands, which, in connection with the principle it involves, is exceedingly beautiful. It is believed that, to the ear of the dying (which, just before death becomes always exquisitely acute), the perfect harmony of the voices of nature is so ravishing, as to make him forget his suffering, and die gently, like one in a pleasant trance. And so, when the last moment approaches, they take him from the close shieling, and bear him out into the open sky, that he may hear the familiar rushing of the streams. I can believe that it is not superstition. I do not think we know how exquisitely nature's many voices are attuned to harmony, and to each other.

The old philosopher we read of might not have been dreaming when he discovered that the order of the sky was like a scroll of written music, and that two stars (which are said to have appeared centuries after his death, in the very places he mentioned) were wanting to complete the harmony. We know how wonderful are the phenomena of color; how strangely like consummate art the strongest dyes are blended in the plumage of birds, and in the cups of flowers; so that, to the practiced eye of the painter, the harmony is inimitably perfect. It is natural to suppose every part of the universe equally perfect; and it is a glorious and elevating thought, that the stars of heaven are moving on continually to music, and that the sounds we daily listen to are but part of a melody that reaches to the very center of God's illimitable spheres.

Willis.

The Wreck of the Hesperus.

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day;
Her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flow did blow

The smoke, now west, now south.

Then up and spake an old sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish main;-
"I pray thee put into yonder port
For I fear the hurricane."

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,

And to-night no moon we see."

But the skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,

And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind
A gale from the northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused like a frightened steed,

Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither; my little daughter

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast,

He cut a rope from a broken spar

And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring O say! what may it be?"

“'Tis a fog bell on a rock-bound coast," And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say! what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress that cannot live In such an angry sea."

"O father, I see a gleaming light;

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm all stiff and stark,

With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow, On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

-

That saved she might be

And she thought of Christ who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept,
Toward the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land,

It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,

She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from the deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her sides
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove—and sank,
"Ho! Ho!" the breakers roared.

At day-break on a bleak sea beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair like the brown sea weed

On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow;

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe.

Longfellow.

God.

The following poem is a translation from the Russian. It has been translated into Japanese, by order of the emperor, and is hung up, embroidered with gold, in the temple of Jeddo. It has also been translated into the Chinese and Tartar languages, written on a piece of rich silk, and suspended in the imperial palace at Pekin.

All

O THOU eternal One! whose presence bright
space doth occupy, all motion guide;
Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight;
Thou only God! There is no God beside!
Being above all beings! Three-in-One!
Whom none can comprehend, and none explore;
Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone;
Embracing all-supporting-ruling o'er-
Being whom we call God—and know no more!