Scatter the germs of the beautiful

In the temples of our God-
The God who starred the uplifted sky,
And flowered the trampled sod!
When He built a temple for himself,
And a home for His priestly race,
He reared each arm in symmetry;
And covered each line in grace.

Scatter the germs of the beautiful

In the depths of the human soul!

They shall bud and blossom and bear the fruit, While the endless ages roll;

Plant with the flowers of charity

The portals of the tomb,
And fair and pure about thy path
In Paradise shall bloom.

-Anonymous.

In the old ages ripe with mystery:
Listen, my darlings, to the legend tender.

An aged man with grave, but gentle look-
His silence sweet with sounds
With which the simple-hearted spring abounds;
Lowing of cattle from the abbey grounds,
Chirping of insect, and the building rook
Mingled like murmurs of a dreaming shell;
Quaint tracery of bird, and branch, and brook,

Flitting

across the pages of his book,

Until the very words a freshness took

Deep in his cell

Sat the Monk Gabriel.

"Great is the misery
Of mine iniquity;

But would I now might see,

Might feast on Thee!"

-The blood with sudden start,

Nigh rent his veins apart

(Oh, condescension of the Crucified:) In all the brilliancy

Of His humanity—

The Christ stood by his side!

Pure as the early lily was his skin,
His cheek out-blushed the rose,
His lips the glows

Of autumn sunset on eternal snows;
And His deep eyes within,

Such nameless beauties, wondrous glories dwelt. The monk in speechless adoration knelt.

In each fair hand, in each fair foot there shone
The peerless stars He took from Calvary;
Around his brows in tenderest lucency

The thorn marks lingered like the flash of dawn;
And from the opening in his side there rilled
A light so dazzling that all the room was filled
With heaven; and transfigured in his place,
His very breathing stilled,
The friar held his robes before his face,
And heard the angels singing!

'Twas but a moment-then, upon the spell Of this sweet presence, lo! a something broke; A something trembling, in the belfry woke, A shower of metal music flinging O'er wold and moat, o'er park and lake and fell,

THE

HE groves were God's first temples. Ere man
learned

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them—ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems-in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences,
That, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks, that high in heaven,

Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,
Here in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn-thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in his ear.

-William Cullen Bryant.

0,

MAY I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence; live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

Of miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order, that controls,
With growing sway, the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

That watched to ease the burden of the world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better,-saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary.
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love,-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread forever.

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious For us, who strive to follow.

May I reach

That purest heaven,-be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle gene: ous ardor. feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense !

So shall I join the choir invisible,

Whose music is the gladness of the world.
-Marion Evans Lewes Cross (George Eliot.)

TALK!

ALKING of sects till late one eve,
Of various doctrines the saints believe,
That night I stood, in a troubled dream,
By the side of a darkly flowing stream.

And a "Churchman" down to the river came:
When I heard a strange voice call his name,
"Good father, stop; when you cross the tide,
You must leave your robes on the other side."

But the aged father did not mind; And his long gown floated out behind, As down to the stream his way he took, His pale hands clasping a gilt-edged book. "I'm bound for heaven; and when I'm there, Shall want my Book of Common Prayer; And, though I put on a starry crown, Ishould feel quite lest without my gown."