Sweet words of pity! Oh! if thou could’st rise, Fair Queen, from out the darkness of the tomb, And their old beauty light again thine eyes, And thy persuasive lips no more be dumb,-- If thou, in all thy charms, should’st thus appear, How thy full heart would throb! With what surprise And rapture thou would’t watch thy gentle peer, By sad Lochleven, as, with tender sighs, She mourned thy fate,--“Poor Mary wandered here.” II. This vengeance Time hath brought thee; and thy foe, Should she, too, rise with envy in her breast, Would see thee throned with mercy in the best And purest heart that ever beat below The purple of a Queen; whose veins are warm With that same blood that gave the beauteous glow To thine own cheeks. In her still lives the charm, For which, in spite of all, men worshipped thee,-- Refined by honour, truth and purity. UNUS ABEST. I. A group of merry children played; The smiling sun to watch them stayed; A cloud came by with deadly shade; “Unus abest.” II. Bright faces glow ’mid dance and game; Hush! some one named a well-known name; But dance and song go on the same; “Unus abest.” III. A father joins his children’s mirth; A mother mourns an awful dearth; “Ashes to ashes, earth to earth;” “Unus abest.” IV. One sits before a lonely fire, Watching the flame’s unsteady spire Wasting with suicidal ire; “Unus abest.” V. Thus, day by day, in house or street, We miss some form we used to meet; Some human heart has ceased to beat; “Unus abest.” VI. The years pass on; our hair is grey; A few years more we’ll pass away, Each leaving to his friends to say “Unus abest.” VII. Then let us live that, when the call Of the Great Trumpet wakes us all, These words from God’s high throne may fall: “NULLUS ABEST.” THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN. (_St. Luke’s Gospel_, xv. 17-32.) I. Long, my Father, have I wandered From the home I loved of old,-- All Thy tender mercies squandered, All Thy loving-kindness sold. II. I have sinned against Thy goodness, Mocked Thy sorrow, scorned Thy love; Treated all Thy care with rudeness, ’Gainst Thy gentle Spirit strove. III. Far from Thy free, bounteous table, I have fed on husks of sin; Wayward, thankless, and unstable, Father, wilt Thou take me in? IV. Take me, oh! in mercy take me, To Thy blessed home again, And let no enticement shake me,-- Satan’s wiles nor wicked men. V.