Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? Have I so found it full of pleasing charms? Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between: Some gleams of sunshine ’mid renewing storms. Is it departing pangs my soul alarms? Or death’s unlovely, dreary, dark abode? For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms: I tremble to approach an angry God, And justly smart beneath His sin-avenging rod. Fain would I say, “Forgive my foul offence!” Fain promise never more to disobey; But should my Author health again dispense, Again I might desert from virtue’s way: Again in folly’s path might go astray; Again exalt the brute and sink the man; Then how should I for Heav’nly mercy pray, Who act so counter Heav’nly mercy’s plan? Who sin so oft have mourn’d: yet to temptation ran. O thou great governor of all below! If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, Or still the tumult of the raging sea; With that controlling power assist ev’n me, Those headlong furious passions to confine, For all unfit I feel my powers to be, To rule their torrent in th’ allowed line; O, aid me with Thy _help_, Omnipotence Divine! _Burns._ God, my supporter and my hope, My _help_ for ever near, Thine arm of mercy held me up, When sinking in despair. _Watts._ HILLS. The chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting _hills_.--Deuteronomy, xxxiii. 15. The _hills_ melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.--Psalm xcvii. 5. For the mountains shall depart, and the _hills_ be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.--Isaiah, liv. 10. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the _hills_, cover us.--Luke, xxiii. 30. Oh! my heart panteth to be far away, Amid the _hills_--the everlasting _hills_; For in my dreams last night a thousand rills And mountain torrents held resistless sway O’er my hush’d spirit; and the silent play Of golden lights and gleamy shadowings Chequer’d my veiled eyes, like seraphs’ wings, That fan the crimson light of fading day. I woke: the hum of traffic, and the din Of mercenary crowds, fill’d the calm air: I heard the voice of mendicant despair Echo the hollow laugh of reckless sin; And love was not, nor peace. Oh! let me win The _hills_, the eternal _hills_--for peace dwells there! _R. F. Housman._ Oh! ye time-honoured _hills_, The ancient, the immortal is it not A high-born privilege ne’er to be forgot, To feel none of earth’s ills?