NEW YEAR’S DAY.

Time, the mundane sphere revolving,
Brings another New Year’s Day;
Orb of light, ’mid lengthened shadows,
Glance one soft and lingering ray,
As we muse on
Days receding fast away.

Pledge of joys that may await us
In our future pilgrimage,
Or of heavenly consolation
That may coming griefs assuage,
To believers
Promised in the sacred page.

Many trials now are ended;
Many painful conflicts o’er;
Chequered scenes withdrawn for ever
That can please nor vex us more;
Memory only
Can the faded past restore.

Many dearest forms are sleeping
In the lone forsaken grave;
How we wept when them consigning
To the hand outstretched to save,
As they struggled
Through death’s dark and gelid wave!

Many days of grace are ended,
How improved has been the past?
Time’s rich grains are softly falling,
Soon may drop for us the last.
Changing seasons
Warn us that we change as fast.

O for happy preparation
For the joys that never fade!
For the everlasting mansion
Death and sin can ne’er invade!
In the likeness
Of our Lord we would be made.

As each new successive period
Hastes that last mysterious one,
Do we shudder, so much dreading
Things invisible, unknown?
Faith reposes
On the Saviour’s cross alone.

Sweet to meet our friends in glory,
Tears for ever wiped away
By the guardian hand that leads us
Up the steep and narrow way,
Time’s short circles
Lost in one eternal day!
Sarissa.

THE SUMMONS.

“And I heard a voice from heaven.”—Rev. xiv. 13.

A voice was heard; a voice was heard;
It sounded from heaven’s high throne;
And the murmuring air breathed along the swift word
Till on earth its dark import was known.
Though it thrill’d not the ears that were list’ning around,
Nor was heard by the spirits bereaved,
It conducted the soul from the region of death,
To receive, through the Saviour, the conqueror’s wreath,
From its sin-woven fetters relieved.

A voice was heard; a voice was heard;
The spirit its summons obeyed;
And to sorrowing Friendship still echoes the word
While she weeps o’er the mouldering dead.
Not a tear can e’er start from those eyelids again;
Not a sigh can e’er heave from that breast:—
But reposing awhile on a pillow of clay,
It will waken renew’d, and then, bounding away,
Will ascend to the realms of the blest.

A voice was heard; a voice was heard;
A whisper,—a whisper from God;
And the soul caught with rapture the welcoming word
As it enter’d its blissful abode.
That voice that awoke from the death-sleep of sin,
And whisper’d, “Thou too art forgiven,”
Stole again on the ear in the accents of love,
Reassur’d of a home with its Father above,
And then wafted the spirit to heaven.
T?a?