ons of our yearning souls
Be answered by the bright Eternal Word?"

So spake the youth of Athens, weeping round,
When Socrates lay calmly down to die;
So spake the sage, prophetic of the hour
When earth's fair morning star should rise on high.

They found Him not, those youths of soul divine,
Long seeking, wandering, watching on life's shore--
Reasoning, aspiring, yearning for the light,
Death came and found them--doubting as before.

But years passed on; and lo! the Charmer came--
Pure, simple, sweet, as comes the silver dew;
And the world knew him not--he walked alone,
Encircled only by his trusting few.

Like the Athenian sage rejected, scorned,
Betrayed, condemned, his day of doom drew nigh;
He drew his faithful few more closely round,
And told them that _his_ hour was come to die.

"Let not your heart be troubled," then he said;
"My Father's house hath mansions large and fair;
I go before you to prepare your place;
I will return to take you with me there."

And since that hour the awful foe is charmed,
And life and death are glorified and fair.
Whither he went we know--the way we know--
And with firm step press on to meet him there.

PILGRIM'S SONG IN THE DESERT.

'Tis morning now--upon the eastern hills
Once more the sun lights up this cheerless scene;
But O, no morning in my Father's house
Is dawning now, for there no night hath been.

Ten thousand thousand now, on Zion's hills,
All robed in white, with palmy crowns, do stray,
While I, an exile, far from fatherland,
Still wandering, faint along the desert way.

O home! dear home! my own, my native home!
O Father, friends, when shall I look on you?
When shall these weary wanderings be o'er,
And I be gathered back to stray no more?

O thou, the brightness of whose gracious face
These weary, longing eyes have never seen,--
By whose dear thought, for whose beloved sake,
My course, through toil and tears, I daily take,--

I think of thee when the myrrh-dropping morn
Steps forth upon the purple eastern steep;
I think of thee in the fair eventide,
When the bright-sandalled stars their watches keep.

And trembling hope, and fainting, sorrowing love,
On thy dear word for comfort doth rely;
And clear-eyed