That Poet wrongs his soul, whose dreary cry Calls "winds" and "waves," and "burning stars of night" To bring our darkness nature's clearer light On that just sentence, "Thou shalt surely die;" To track the spirit as it leaves its clay To bring back surety of its future home, Or echo of the voice that calleth "come," To prove that it is borne to perfect day. Say rather, "winds," who heard the Master speak, And "waves," who by His voice transfixed were stayed, And stars that lighted Christ's deep shade-- Your confirmation of our trust we seek. Ye know how shadowy Death's dreary prison, Because ye witnessed Christ our life, up risen. THE WILLOWS, 1858. THE NEW ENGLAND THANKSGIVING. BY THE REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D. When cellar and barn and storehouse were filled with food for the coming winter, our pious New England forefathers used their first common leisure to make public and joyful acknowledgment of their blessings to the God of sunshine and of rain; to Him, who clothes the valleys with corn, and the hills with flocks. Almost universally, they placed the meeting-houses, where these thanks were rendered, on the hill-top commanding the widest view of the fields from which their prosperity sprung, and nearest to the sky, whence their blessings came. Their modest homes were sheltered from the winds by the barns that held their wealth and overshadowed their low dwellings. The earth was precious in their eyes, as the source of their living. They could spare no fertile or sheltered spot, even for the burial-ground, but economically laid it out in the sand, or on the bleak hill-side; while they threw away no fencing on the house of God, but jealously preserved that costly distinction for their arable lands and orchards. They were farmers; and it was no unmeaning thing for them to keep the harvest feast. They had prayed in drought, with all faith and fervor, for the blessing of rain; in seed-time, for the favoring sunshine and soft showers; and in harvest, that blight and frost might spare their corn; and when in the late autumn, all their prayers had been heard, and their hands and homes were crowned with plenty, their thanksgiving anthem was an incense of the heart, and their honored pastors knew not how to pour out a flood of gratitude too copious for the thankful people's "Amen." A full hour's prayer wearied not their patient knees; and the sermon, with its sixteenthly, finally, and to conclude (before the _improvement_, itself a modern sermon in length), did not outmeasure the people's honest sense of their grounds of thankfulness to God.