Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange; We cheer the pale gold-diggers— Each soul is worth so much on 'Change, And marked, like sheep, with figures. Be pitiful, O God! The curse of gold upon the land, The lack of bread enforces The rail-cars snort from strand to strand, "Till death us part!"-O words, to be Our best for love the deathless! Be pitiful, dear God! The happy children come to us, And look up in our faces: They ask us-Was it thus, and thus, We cannot speak: we see anew And feel our mother's smile press through The kisses she is giving. We sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding: The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass, We look upon the longest. Be pitiful, O God! And soon all vision waxeth dull Men whisper, "He is dying: We cry no more, "Be pitiful! We have no strength for crying: No strength, no need! Then, Soul of mine, Look up and triumph rather Lo! in the depth of God's Divine, The Son adjures the Father BE PITIFUL, O GOD! STANZAS. William Knox, OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD? Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, And the young and the old, and the low and the high The infant a mother attended and loved; The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, And the memory of those who loved her and praised, The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne; The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave, The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap; The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep; The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away with the grass that we tread. The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed For we are the same our fathers have been: The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think; To the life we are clinging they also would cling: They loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They died, aye! they died; we things that are now, And make in their dwelling a transient abode, Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road. Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, We mingle together in sunshine and rain; 'Tis the wink of the eye, 'tis the draught of a breath. From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud, HYMN. C. S. M. "We, which do believe, have entered into rest! The soul hath many an 66 Where, "in the midst" upper room" of sadness appears her risen Lord, Whose presence turns the bitterest grief to gladness, "Peace!" All unheeded is the tempest sweeping Around the spirit for within the doors "We enter into rest." The Sabbath keeping" May be begun in hearts afar from home, E'en though our eyes may be well used to weeping, Unseen by human eyes, the light is beaming, "We have believed" we trust the word unfailing, And here and now, "do enter into rest; " "We have believed" -no foe our peace assailing, Can break the soul's repose on Jesus' breast. |