my dark forebodings cease;
And through the storm and danger's thrall,
It led me to the port of peace.
Now, safely moored, my perils o'er,
I'll sing, first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore,
The Star, the Star of Bethlehem!

Besides this delightful hymn, with its graphic sea-faring metaphors, two
others, at least, of the same boy-poet hold their place in many of the
church and chapel collections:

The Lord our God is clothed with might,
The winds obey His will;
He speaks, and in his heavenly height
The rolling sun stands still.

And--

Oft in danger, oft in woe,
Onward, Christians, onward go.

Henry Kirke White died in the autumn of 1806, when he was scarcely
twenty years old. His "Ode to Disappointment," and the miscellaneous
flowers and fragments of his genius, make up a touching volume. The fire
of a pure, strong spirit burning through a consumptive frame is in them
all.

_THE TUNE._

"When, marshalled on the mighty plain" has a choral set to it in the
_Methodist Hymnal_--credited to Thos. Harris, and entitled
"Crimea"--which divides the three stanzas into six, and breaks the
continuity of the hymn. Better sing it in its original form--long metre
double--to the dear old melody of "Bonny Doon." The voices of Scotland,
England and America are blended in it.

[Illustration: William B. Bradbury]

The origin of this Caledonian air, though sometimes fancifully traced to
an Irish harper and sometimes to a wandering piper of the Isle of Man,
is probably lost in antiquity. Burns, however, whose name is linked with
it, tells this whimsical story of it, though giving no date save "a good
many years ago,"--(apparently about 1753). A virtuoso, Mr. James Millar,
he writes, wishing he were able to compose a Scottish tune, was told by
a musical friend to sit down to his harpsichord and make a rhythm of
some kind _solely on the black keys_, and he would surely turn out a
Scotch tune. The musical friend, pleased at the result of his jest,
caught the string of plaintive sounds made by Millar, and fashioned it
into "Bonny Doon."

"LAND AHEAD!"

The burden of this hymn was suggested by the dying words of John Adams,
one of the crew of the English ship Bounty who in 1789 mutinied, set the
captain and officers adrift, and ran the vessel to a tropical island,
where they burned her. In a few years vice and violence had decimated
the wicked crew, who