What in your mighty sweetness, do you seek, Ye tones of Heaven, with me that dwell in dust? Seek elsewhere mortals flexible and weak. I hear the message, but I cannot trust; Faith’s chosen child is the miraculous. I dare not strive those distant spheres to gain, From whence these holy tidings came to us; And yet it seems that long-remembered strain, In youth, recalls me back to life again. The kiss of heavenly love upon me fell, In the deep stillness of the sabbath calm, The heartfelt fullness of the sabbath _bell_, A prayer to my glad soul sufficient balm, Beyond conception sweet; a holy longing Drove me to wander forth through wood and mead; And in the thousand tear-drops warmly thronging, I felt a world grow up, mine own indeed. The joyous sports of youth those tones revealing, Of the spring feast once more the joy unfolds, And recollection, fraught with childish feeling, Me from the last dread step of all withholds. Oh sound, sound on, thou sweet celestial strain, The tears well forth, the earth hath me again. _Goethe’s “Faust.”_ List not those cries! How strangely do they blend With the sweet _bells_ from yonder gothic tower, Pealing athwart the water. Such the contrast Of wild religious awe to earthly clamour, For on the morrow, and the morrow’s morrow, At this still hour those _bells_ will still peal on; But these harsh sinful cries, the moment’s offspring, Will with the moment pass to nought away, They, and the passions, even as briefly raging; And, as the echo of those cries, borne far Up the deep silvery Thames, there dies in air In the dim distance, seeming well to blend With the calm beauty of the hour, and heighten The melody of silence; so the thought On this vain uproar shall in future years Prove but a gentle memory! since we shared The cares it wooed to life, together. _Archer Gurney._ Stop, O stop the passing _bell_! Painfully, too painfully, It strikes against the heart, that knell, I cannot bear its tones--they tell Of misery, of misery! All that soothed and sweetened life, In the mother and the wife-- All that would a charm have cast O’er the future, as the past-- All is torturing in that knell! Stop, O stop the passing _bell_! Stop it! no--but change the tone, And joyfully, ah, joyfully, Let the altered chimes ring on, For the spirit that hath flown, Exultingly, exultingly! She hath left her couch of pain, She shall never feel again, But as angels feel!--afar, Chimed beyond the morning star, Agony and death unknown! Let the joyful chimes ring on! _Robert Story._ BENEFICENCE--BENEVOLENCE.