O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

1872.

A WOMAN.

Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill,
Behold! thou art a woman still!
And, by that sacred name and dear,
I bid thy better self appear.
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see
The rudimental purity,
That, spite of change and loss, makes good
Thy birthright-claim of womanhood;
An inward loathing, deep, intense;
A shame that is half innocence.
Cast off the grave-clothes of thy sin!
Rise from the dust thou liest in,
As Mary rose at Jesus' word,
Redeemed and white before the Lord!
Reclairn thy lost soul! In His name,
Rise up, and break thy bonds of shame.
Art weak? He 's strong. Art fearful? Hear
The world's O'ercomer: "Be of cheer!"
What lip shall judge when He approves?
Who dare to scorn the child He loves?

THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.

The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by Mr. John Anderson
to Agassiz for the uses of a summer school of natural history. A large
barn was cleared and improvised as a lecture-room. Here, on the first
morning of the school, all the company was gathered. "Agassiz had
arranged no programme of exercises," says Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis
Agassiz; his Life and Correspondence, "trusting to the interest of the
occasion to suggest what might best be said or done. But, as he looked
upon his pupils gathered there to study nature with him, by an impulse
as natural as it was unpremeditated, he called upon then to join in
silently asking God's blessing on their work together. The pause was
broken by the first words of an address no less fervent than its
unspoken prelude." This was in the summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the
December following.