ministers of heaven,
Liveried with beauty, and deep tenderness,
Missioned in mercy to this fallen sphere
Proclaiming peace and blessedness above;
Threading the ranks of Earth's fierce battle field,
Amid the clangour of death-darting steel,
Raising the wounded from their helplessness,
And bearing life draughts to the sinking soul!
O Mother Earth! thine arms will fondle her
When ingrate man hath drain'd her spirit dry,
Fashioned in weakness, yet in weakness strong
Where honour were the foeman, what is she
Before the onslaught of satanic serfs?--
The mirror of her purity obscured,
Polluted by lust's pestilential breath--
Pluck'd like a flower to while an hour away,
Then cast to wither on the barren ground,
Shattered and bruised beneath base passion's heel,
And all the clinging tendrils of her love
Torn bleeding from the stay round which they clung.

Look thou upon that stream, rough with the whirl
Of crime, and woe, and wretchedness, that float
Like poisoned scum upon the driving flood,
Filling the breath of life with noxious blasts
That smite humanity with pestilence.
And tremble thou, though man discern it not,
Ten thousand times more foul it shows to God;
Then praise him for the twilight of thy sense.
Yet there is much of good and fair in life,
That like the glow upon the eastern sky,
Blazons the glory of approaching day.

MAN.

O! is not life then sweetest to the soul
In utter solitude, or that deep calm
When all of Earth, its cares and interests,
Are shaken from the spirit, as the moth
Doffs from its wings the natal crysalis
And wanders through the blue serene of heaven?
In this pure scene the din of man would sound
Harsher than discord amid melody.
Here no rude tongue should whisper of the things
Poor Earth bows down to worship--fashion, wealth,
And hollow mockings gilded by a name,
That makes the calf which browses on the plain
Turn to a god when moulded in the gold.
No thought should rise, that passing into speech
Might soil the purity of new-born flowers,
Fresh with the dews of morn and paradise,
But like an angel singing through the skies,
Wing the blue empyrean of the mind,
And break in music on the thrilling sense.

SPIRIT.

Is there no music in the gentle word
That falls in consolation on the sad,
Starting the crystal tear into the eye,
Filtrate through gratitude till there remai