* * * * *

THE HILLS OF THE LORD.

  God ploughed one day with an earthquake,
    And drove his furrows deep! 
  The huddling plains upstarted. 
    The hills were all a-leap!

  But that is the mountains’ secret,
    Age-hidden in their breast;
  “God’s peace is everlasting,”
    Are the dream-words of their rest.

  He hath made them the haunt of beauty,
    The home elect of his grace;
  He spreadeth his mornings on them,
    His sunsets light their face.

  His thunders tread in music
    Of footfalls echoing long,
  And carry majestic greeting
    Around the silent throng.

  His winds bring messages to them,
    Wild storm-news from the main;
  They sing it down to the valleys
    In the love-song of the rain.

  Green tribes from far come trooping,
    And over the uplands flock;
  He weaveth the zones together
    In robes for his risen rock.

  They are nurseries for young rivers;
    Nests for his flying cloud;
  Homesteads for new-born races,
    Masterful, free, and proud.

  The people of tired cities
    Come up to their shrines and pray;
  God freshens again within them,
    As he passes by all day.

  And lo, I have caught their secret,
    The beauty deeper than all. 
  This faith—­that life’s hard moments,
    When the jarring sorrows befall,

  Are but God ploughing his mountains;
    And the mountains yet shall be
  The source of his grace and freshness
    And his peace everlasting to me.

WILLIAM CHANNING GANNETT.

* * * * *

SUNRISE.

  As on my bed at dawn I mused and prayed,
  I saw my lattice prankt upon the wall,
  The flaunting leaves and flitting birds withal—­
  A sunny phantom interlaced with shade;
  “Thanks be to Heaven,” in happy mood I said,
  “What sweeter aid my matins could befall
  Than this fair glory from the east hath made? 
  What holy sleights hath God, the Lord of all,
  To bid us feel and see!  We are not free
  To say we see not, for the glory comes
  Nightly and daily, like the flowing sea;
  His lustre pierces through the midnight glooms,
  And at prime hours, behold! he follows me
  With golden shadows to my secret rooms.”

CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.

* * * * *

GOD AND MAN.

    FROM THE “ESSAY ON MAN,” EPISTLES I AND IV.

    Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
  Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind: 
  His soul, proud science never taught to stray
  Far as the solar walk or Milky Way: 
  Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
  Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven;
  Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,