"Lift up your heads, ye gates of God! the King of glory comes!"

And so they stand o'erlooking earth's trouble, pain and sin,
And wait the call to lift their gates and let the King come in.
O calm, majestic mountains! O everlasting hills!
Beside your patient watch how small seem all life's joys and ills!

Beyond, the restless ocean, mysterious, vast, and dim,
Whose changeful waves forever chant their grand triumphal hymn.
Now tempest-lashed and raging, with deep and hungry roar,
The foam-capped billows dash themselves in anger on the shore,

Now wavelets ripple gently along the quiet strand,
While summer's sunshine broodeth soft o'er all the sea and land.
O mighty waves! as chainless, as free, as birds that skim!
There's One who rules the stormy sea--thy song is all of him.

And so in the shadowy forest the birds sing loud and sweet
From swaying boughs where breezes rock their little broods to sleep.
The golden cups of the cowslip spring from the mossy sod,
And the sweet blue violet blooms alone--just for itself and God.

It is aye the same old lesson, from mountain, wood, and sea,
The old, old story, ever new, and wondrous grand to me--
Of One who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand;
Whose presence shone from mountain top in that far eastern land.

"The groves are God's own temples"; the wild birds sing his praise;
And every flower in the forest dim its humble tribute pays;
For God loves all his creatures, however weak and small;
His grandest works give praise to him, for he is Lord of all.

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by is all.

--Alice Cary.

DON'T TAKE IT TO HEART

There's many a trouble
Would break like a bubble,
And into the waters of Lethe depart,
Did we not rehearse it,
And tenderly nurse it,
And give it a permanent place in the heart.

There's many a sorrow
Would vanish to-morrow
Were we but willing to furnish the wings;
So sadly intruding,
And quietly brooding,
It hatches out all sorts of horrible things.

H