Ah! at the close of many splendid hours,
While falls Thy gracious light in radiant showers,
We seek Thy face, we praise Thee, bless Thee, sing
This song of reverence, Master, Maker, King!

To Thee, from whom all shining blessings flow,
All gifts of lustre, all the joys we know,
To Thee, O Father, in this lordly space,
The great world turns with worship in its face.

For that glad season which will pass to-day
With light and music like a psalm away,
The gathered nations with a grand accord,
In sight of Thy high heaven, thank Thee, Lord!

All praise is Thine--all love that we can give
Is also Thine, in whose large grace we live,
In whom we find the _One_ long-suffering Friend,
Whose immemorial mercy has no end.

Basil Moss

Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song--
Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tracts
Whose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streams
Catch mighty life and voice from thee, and make
A lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights.
Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,
The grand, austere, imperial utterance.
Which drives my soul before it back to days
In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high
Past broken hills, and when the polar gale
Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath
That speaks for ever of the White South Land
Alone with God and Silence in the cold,
I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,

A story shining with a woman's love!
And who that knows that love can ever doubt
How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;
For while the tale of Basil Moss was one
Not blackened with those stark, satanic sins
Which call for superhuman sacrifice,
Still, from the records of the world's sad life,
This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we've learned,
There's not a depth to which a man can fall,
No slough of crime in which such one can lie
Stoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,
But that some tender woman can be found
To love and shield him still.

What was the fate
Of Basil Moss who, thirty years ago,
A brave, high-minded, but impetuous youth,
Left happy homesteads in the sweetest isle
That wears the sober light of Northern suns?
What happened him, the man who crossed far, fierce
Sea-circles of the hoarse Atlantic--who,
Without a friend to help him in the world,
Comme