, I have caught their secret,
The beauty deeper than all.
This faith--that life's hard moments,
When the jarring sorrows befall,

Are but God ploughing his mountains;
And the mountains yet shall be
The source of his grace and freshness
And his peace everlasting to me.

WILLIAM CHANNING GANNETT.

* * * * *

SUNRISE.

As on my bed at dawn I mused and prayed,
I saw my lattice prankt upon the wall,
The flaunting leaves and flitting birds withal--
A sunny phantom interlaced with shade;
"Thanks be to Heaven," in happy mood I said,
"What sweeter aid my matins could befall
Than this fair glory from the east hath made?
What holy sleights hath God, the Lord of all,
To bid us feel and see! We are not free
To say we see not, for the glory comes
Nightly and daily, like the flowing sea;
His lustre pierces through the midnight glooms,
And at prime hours, behold! he follows me
With golden shadows to my secret rooms."

CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.

* * * * *

GOD AND MAN.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON MAN," EPISTLES I AND IV.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind:
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or Milky Way:
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence:
Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such,--
Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust,--
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there;
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes:
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be god