your engagements and pledges?
Where are they--where are they to-day?
Where are all the covenants sacred
That mortal with mortals e'er made?"
A silent voice whispers,--"Departed--
'Tis long since their records did fade!"

I hear him again, while he's winging
His flight through the realms of the sky,
Th' immovable covenant singing
With voice so melodious and high
That all the bright mountains celestial
Are dancing, as thrill'd with delight:
Too lofty for visions terrestial--
He vanishes now from my sight.

Blest Saviour, my rock, and my refuge,
I fain to thy bosom would flee;
Of sorrows an infinite deluge
On Calv'ry thou barest for me:
Thou fountain of love everlasting--
High home of the purpose to save:
Myself on the covenant casting,
I triumph o'er death and the grave.

AN ODE TO THE THUNDER.

TRANSLATED BY THE REV. R. HARRIES JONES, M.A.

[The author of the following poem, Mr. David Richards, better known by
his bardic name of Dafydd Ionawr, was born in the year 1751 at Glanmorfa,
near Towyn, Merionethshire, and died in 1827. He was educated at
Ystradmeurig Grammar School, with a view to entering the Welsh Church,
but his academic career was cut short by the death of his parents, and he
devoted himself to tuition. He composed two long poems, viz.: an "Ode to
the Trinity," and an "Ode to the Deluge," besides a number of minor
poems, and were first published in 1793. This poet is designated the
Welsh Milton, by reason of the grandeur of his conceptions and the force
of his expression.]

Swift-flying courser of the ambient skies!
Thy trackless bourne no mortal ken espies!
But in thy wake the swelling echoes roll
While furious torrents pour from pole to pole;
The thunder bellows forth its sullen roar
Like seething ocean on the storm-lashed shore;
The muttering heavens send terror through the vale,
And awe-struck mountains shiver in the gale;
An angry, sullen, overwhelming sound
That shakes each craggy hollow round and round,
And more astounding than the serried host
Which all the world's artillery can boast;--
And fiercely rushing from the lurid sky
From pregnant clouds and murky canopy
The deluge saturates both hill and plain--
The maddened welkin groaning with the strain:
The torrents dash from upland moors along
Their journey to the main, in endless throng,
And restless, turbid rivers seethe and rack,
Like foaming cataracts, their bounding track;
A devast