Where is religion found?  In what bright sphere
    Dwells holy love, in majesty serene
    Shedding its beams, like planet o’er the scene;
  The steady lustre through the varying year
    Still glowing with the heavenly rays that flow
    In copious streams to soften human woe?

  It is not ’mid the busy scenes of life,
    Where careworn mortals crowd along the way
    That leads to gain—­shunning the light of day;
  In endless eddies whirl’d, where pain and strife
    Distract the soul, and spread the shades of night,
    Where love divine should dwell in purest light.

  Short-sighted man!—­go seek the mountain’s brow,
    And cast thy raptured eye o’er hill and dale;
    The waving woods, the ever-blooming vale,
  Shall spread a feast before thee, which till now
    Ne’er met thy gaze—­obscured by passion’s sway;
    And Nature’s works shall teach thee how to pray.

  Or wend thy course along the sounding shore,
    Where giant waves resistless onward sweep
    To join the awful chorus of the deep—­
  Curling their snowy manes with deaf’ning roar,
    Flinging their foam high o’er the trembling sod,
    And thunder forth their mighty song to God!

J.W.D.M.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LAND-JOBBER

  Some men, like greedy monsters of the deep,
  Still prey upon their kind;—­their hungry maws
  Engulph their victims like the rav’nous shark
  That day and night untiring plies around
  The foamy bubbling wake of some great ship;
  And when the hapless mariner aloft
  Hath lost his hold, and down he falls
  Amidst the gurgling waters on her lee,
  Then, quick as thought, the ruthless felon-jaws
  Close on his form;—­the sea is stain’d with blood—­
  One sharp wild shriek is heard—­and all is still! 
  The lion, tiger, alligator, shark—­
  The wily fox, the bright enamelled snake—­
  All seek their prey by force or stratagem;
  But when—­their hunger sated—­languor creeps
  Around their frames, they quickly sink to rest. 
  Not so with man—­he never hath enough;
  He feeds on all alike; and, wild or tame,
  He’s but a cannibal.  He burns, destroys,
  And scatters death to sate his morbid lust
  For empty fame.  But when the love of gain
  Hath struck its roots in his vile, sordid heart,—­
  Each gen’rous impulse chill’d,—­like vampire, now,
  He sucks the life-blood of his friends or foes
  Until he viler grows than savage beast. 
  And when, at length, stretch’d on his bed of death,
  And powerless, friendless, o’er his clammy brow
  The dark’ning shades descend, strong to the last
  His avarice lives; and while he feebly plucks
  His wretched coverlet, he gasps for breath,
  And thinks he gathers gold!

J.W.D.M.