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HREE words fall sweetly on my soul
As music from an angel lyre,

That bid my spirit spurn control

And upward to its source aspire; The sweetest sounds to mortals given Are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven.

Dear Mother! ne'er shall I forget

Thy brow, thine eye, thy pleasant smile! Though in the sea of death hath set

Thy star of life, my guide awhile,
Oh, never shall thy form depart
From the bright pictures in my heart.

And like a bird that from the flowers,
Wing-weary seeks her wonted nest,
My spirit, e'en in manhood's hours,
Turns back in childhood's Home to rest;
The cottage, garden, hill and stream,
Still linger like a pleasant dream.

And while to one engulfing grave,

By time's swift tide we 're driven, How sweet the thought that every wave But bears us nearer Heaven! There we shall meet when life is o'er, In that blest Home, to part no more. WILLIAM GOLDSMITH BROWN.

GIVE ME BACK MY YOUTH AGAIN.

SHEN give me back that time of pleasures,
While yet in joyous growth I sang,-
When, like a fount, the crowding measures
Uninterrupted gushed and sprang!

Then bright mist veiled the world before me,
In opening buds a marvel woke,
As I the thousand blossoms broke

Which every valley richly bore me!

I nothing had, and yet enough for youthJoy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth.

Give unrestrained the old emotion,
The bliss that touched the verge of pain,
The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,-
O, give me back my youth again!

BAYARD TAYLOR.
(From the German of Goethe.)

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CALL that, the Book of Job, aside from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble book! all men's book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem-man's destiny-and God's way with him here in this earth. And all in such free, flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual; the horse hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?-he "laughs at the shaking of the spear!" Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind; so soft and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.

Such living likenesses were never since drawn.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

MORTALITY.

OH, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;

And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.

The child that a mother attended and loved,
The mother that infant's affection that proved,
The husband that mother and infant that blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,

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Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by; And the memory of those that beloved her and praised,

Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the
steep,

The beggar that wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed,
That wither away to let others succeed;

So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that hath often been told.

For we are the same that our fathers have been;
We see the same sights that our fathers have seen, -
We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
And we run the same course that our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink;

To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling;
But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.

They loved, but their story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may

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