place;
Some grand emotion lights your face:

At once I stand by Mizpeh's walls;
With smiles the martyred daughter falls,
And desolate are Mizpeh's halls!

Intrusive babblers come between;
With calm, pale brow and lofty mein,
You thread the circle like a queen!

Then sweeps the royal Esther by;
The deep devotion in her eye,
Is looking "If I die, I die!"

You stroll the gardener's flowery walks;
The plants to me are grainless stalks,
And Ruth to old Naomi talks.

Adopted child of Judah's creed,
Like Judah's daughters, true at need,
I see you mid the alien seed.

I watch afar the gleaner sweet;
I watch like Boaz in the wheat,
And find you lying at my feet.

My feet! Oh! if the spell that lures,
My heart through all these dreams endures,
How soon shall I be stretched at yours!

TO HELEN.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

A CHRISTMAS CHANT.

FATHER RYAN.

Four thousand years earth waited,
Four thousand years men prayed,
Four thousand years the nations sighed
That their King so long delayed.

The prophets told His coming,
The saintly for Him sighed;
And the star of the Babe of Bethlehem
Shone o'er them when they died.

Their faces toward the future,
They longed to hail the light
That in the after centuries
Would rise on Christmas night.

But still the Saviour tarried,
Within His father's home;
And the nations wept and wondered why
The promise had not come.

At last earth's hope was granted,
And God was a child of earth;
And a thousand angels chanted
The lowly midnight birth.

Ah! Bethlehem was grander
That hour than paradise;
And the light of earth that night eclipsed
The splendour of the skies.

Then let us sing the anthem,
The angels once did sing;
Until the music of love and praise
O'er whole wide world will ring.

Glory in excelsis!
Sound the thrilling song;
In excelsis Deo!
Roll the hymn along.

[Illustration: Then let us sing the