Give her purpose strong and holy, Faith and self-devotion high; These Life’s common by-ways brighten, Every hope intensify. Teach her all the brave endurance That the sons of earth require; May she with a patient labor To the great and good aspire. Should some mighty grief oppress her Heavier than she can bear, Oh! sustain her by Thy presence, Hear and answer Thou her prayer. And whene’er the storms of winter Round my precious Lily reign, To a fairer clime transplant her There to live and bloom again. M. G. H. * * * * * THE EARTH. BY R. H. STODDARD. As one who walks with eyes upon the ground, Arrested slow beside a dusty mound, Where swarms of ants are bustling in the sand, As if they had a Universe on hand, Surveys their nothings with a quiet smile, And stops to muse and meditate a while— Even so the sage with philosophic mind Looks down upon the earth and all mankind! And yet withal this little orb is grand, With its circumference of sea and land: The Ocean girds it with a belt immense, Heaving in billowy magnificence Round Continents with all their subject lands, A thousand sceptres in their giant hands!— And mountains loom majestical on high, And lift their foreheads in the blank of sky, Bathed in its brightness, while their robes of snow Trail o’er the tallest pines, and far below, Poured from their urns, the streams divide the plain And bear their tributes to the sounding main. And the round hills and verdant solitudes That slumber in the heart of trackless woods; The broad champain, the hollow vale and mead, And the green pastures where the cattle feed Deep in the daisies; and the silver brooks, And the long winding lanes, and grassy nooks, All, all, are clothed in loveliness and light, The various beauty of the day and night, While the great Earth, as when its flight begun, Wheels like a mighty eagle round the Sun! Yes! Earth is beautiful in every phase, Covered with glory and perpetual bays;— What pomps and pageants fill the glowing east, Hung like a palace on a bridal feast, When clouds of purple standards are unrolled, And morning lifts its diadem of gold! What streams of radiance flood the azure field, When the Noon marches with his shining shield And scales the eternal steep of Heaven alone, And looks o’er Nature from his burning throne!