SACRED AND PROFANE WRITERS.

SIR AUBREY DE VERE, Bart., was born at Curragh Chase, Adare, in the interesting county of Limerick, Ireland, Aug. 28, 1788. As a poet he is known chiefly by his sonnets, which were pronounced by Wordsworth to be among the most perfect of the age, and by his dramas, which challenged comparison with Tennyson's on the same subject, the life of Mary Tudor. Sir Aubrey's life was that of a country gentleman, and was mainly passed at the place of his birth, the ancestral home, now occupied by his son, who bears his name. There he died July 28, 1845.

LET those who will, hang rapturously o'er
The flowing eloquence of Plato's page,
Repeat, with flashing eye, the sounds that pour
From Homer's verse as with a torrent's rage;
Let those who list, ask Tully to assuage
Wild hearts with high-wrought periods, and

restore

The reign of rhetoric; or maxims sage
Winnow from Seneca's sententious lore.
Not these, but Judah's hallowed bards, to me
Are dear: Isaiah's noble energy;
The temperate grief of Job; the artless strain
Of Ruth and pastoral Amos; the high songs
Of David; and the tale of Joseph's wrongs,
Simply pathetic, eloquently plain.

SIR AUBREY DE VERE.

PALESTINE.

BLEST land of Judæa! thrice hallowed of song, Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;

In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy

sea,

On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.

With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore, Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered be

fore;

power,

I tread where the Twelve in their wayfaring trod,

I stand where they stood with the Chosen of God,

Where his blessing was heard and his lessons were taught,

Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought.

Oh, here with his flock the sad Wanderer

came.

These hills he toiled over in grief are the

same.

The founts where he drank by the wayside still flow,

And the same airs are blowing which breathed on his brow!

And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet, But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her feet;

For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone,

And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone.

But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God? Were my spirit but turned from the outward and dim,

It could gaze, even now, on the presence of him!

Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when,

In love and in meekness, he moved among

men;

And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of the sea

In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me!

And what if my feet may not tread where he stood,

Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood, Nor my eyes see the cross which he bowed him to bear,

Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer.

Yet, Loved of the Father, thy Spirit is near,

The Spirit surviveth the things of an hour; Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame On the heart's secret altar is burning the same! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

THE PATHWAYS OF THE HOLY

LAND.

THE pathways of Thy land are little changed Since Thou wert there;

The busy world through other ways has ranged, And left these bare.

The rocky path still climbs the glowing steep Of Olivet,

Though rains of two millenniums wear it deep,
Men tread it yet.

Still to the gardens o'er the brook it leads,
Quiet and low;

Before his sheep the shepherd on it treads,
His voice they know.

The wild fig throws broad shadows o'er it still,
As once o'er thee;

Peasants go home at evening up that hill
To Bethany.

And as when gazing thou didst weep o'er them,
From height to height

The white roofs of discrowned Jerusalem
Burst on our sight.

These ways were strewed with garments once, and palm,

Which we tread thus ;

Here through thy triumph on thou passedst, calm,

On to thy cross.

The waves have washed fresh sands upon the shore

Of Galilee;

But chiselled in the hillsides evermore

Thy paths we see.

Man has not changed them in that slumbering land,

Nor time effaced:

Where thy feet trod to bless we still may stand; All can be traced.

now

As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's brow.

Truer than these:

Where'er the poor and tried and suffering are,

Thy steps faith sees.