HORATIUS BONAR.

HORATIUS BONAR.

THE INNER CALM.

CALM me, my God, and keep me calm,
While these hot breezes blow;
Be like the night-dew's cooling balm
Upon earth's fevered brow.

Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,
Soft resting on thy breast;
Soothe me with holy hymn and psalm,
And bid my spirit rest.

Calm me, my God, and keep me calm ;
Let thine outstretched wing
Be like the shade of Elim's palm
Beside her desert spring.

Yes, keep me calm, though loud and rude

The sounds my ear that greet, Calm in the closet's solitude,

Calm in the bustling street;

Calm in the hour of buoyant health,
Calm in my hour of pain,
Calm in my poverty or wealth,
Calm in my loss or gain;

Calm in the sufferance of wrong,

Like Him who bore my shame, Calm mid the threatening, taunting throng,

Who hate Thy holy name;

power

My listening spirit stir;
Let not the tidings of the hour

E'er find too fond an ear;

Calm as the ray of sun or star

Which storms assail in vain, Moving unruffled through earth's war, The eternal calm to gain.

THE MASTER'S TOUCH.

In the still air the music lies unheard;
In the rough marble beauty hides

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Great Master, touch us with thy skilful hand;

unseen:

To make the music and the beauty,
needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's
chisel keen.

- W. ALEXANDER.

Let not the music that is in us die! Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let,

Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie!

Spare not the stroke! do with us as thou wilt!

Let there be naught unfinished, broken, marred;

Complete thy purpose, that we may be

come

Thy perfect image, thou our God and
Lord!

Calm when the great world's news with Up above, the tree with leaf unfading,

By the everlasting river's brink;
And the sea of glass, beyond whose margin
Never yet the sun was known to sink.

W. ALEXANDER.

UP ABOVE.

Down below, the wild November whist-
ling

Through the beech's dome of burning red,
And the Autumn sprinkling penitential
Dust and ashes on the chestnut's head.

Down below, a pall of airy purple
Darkly hanging from the mountain-side;
And the sunset from his eyebrow staring
O'er the long roll of the leaden tide.

Down below, the white wings of the seabird

Dashed across the furrows, dark with
mould,
Flitting, like the memories of our child-
hood,
Through the trees, now waxen pale and
old.

Down below, imaginations quivering
Through our human spirits like the wind;
Thoughts that toss, like leaves about the
woodland;

Hope, like sea-birds, flashed across the mind.