d no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wand'ring sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on my ear it rings
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings,

"Build thee more noble mansions, O my soul.
As the swift seasons roll:
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thy outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

Dr. Frederic Hedge included the poem in his hymn-book but without any
singing-supplement to the words.

WHITTIER'S SERVICE SONG.

It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the harvest field.

If this stanza and the four following do not reveal all the strength of
John G. Whittier's spirit, they convey its serious sweetness. The
verses were loved and prized by both President Garfield and President
McKinley. On the Sunday before the latter went from his Canton, O., home
to his inauguration in Washington the poem was sung as a hymn at his
request in the services at the Methodist church where he had been a
constant worshipper.

The second stanza is the one most generally recognized and oftenest
quoted:

Yet where our duty's task is wrought
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done.

John Greenleaf Whittier, the poet of the oppressed, was born in
Haverhill, Mass., 1807, worked on a farm and on a shoe-bench, and
studied at the local academy, until, becoming of age, he went to
Hartford, Conn., and began a brief experience in editorial life. Soon
after his return to Massachusetts he was elected to the Legislature, and
after his duties ended there he left the state for Philadelphia to edit
the _Pennsylvania Freeman_. A few years later he returned again, and
established his home in Amesbury, the town with which his life and works
are always associated.

He died in 1892 at Hampton Falls, N.H., where he had gone for his
health.

_THE TUNE._

"Abends," the smooth triple-time choral joined to Whittier's poem by the
music editor of the new _Methodist Hymnal_, speaks its meaning so well
that it is scarcely worth while to look for another. Sir Herbert Stanley
Oakeley, the composer, was