ON HEARING A CLOCK STRIKE AT MIDNIGHT ON THE 31ST OF DECEMBER.

KNELL of departed years!

Thy voice is sweet to me;
It wakes no sad foreboding fears,
Calls forth no sympathetic tears,
Time's restless course to see.
From hallowed ground

I hear a sound,

Diffusing through the air a holy calm around.

Thou art the voice of LOVE;

To chide each doubt away;
And as the murmur faintly dies,
Visions of past enjoyment rise,
In long and bright array;
I hail the sign,

That love divine

Will o'er my future path of life in mercy shine.

Thou art the voice of HOPE;
The music of the spheres,

A song of blessings yet to come,
A herald from my native home,
My soul delighted hears;
By sin deceived,

By nature grieved,

Still am I nearer rest than when I first believed.

Thou art the voice of LIFE;

A sound that seems to say,

"O prisoner in this gloomy vale,

Thy flesh shall faint, thy heart shall fail :
Yet fairer scenes thy spirit hail

That cannot pass away;

Here grief and pain

Thy steps detain,

There in the image of the Lord, thou wilt arise and reign."

THE HOLY COMMUNION.

FORTH from the dark and stormy sky,
Lord, to thine altar's shade we fly;
Forth from the world, its hope and fear,
Saviour, we seek thy shelter here :
Weary and weak thy grace we pray;
Turn not, O Lord, thy guests away!

Long have we roam'd in want and pain,
Long have we sought thy rest in vain;
Wildered in doubt, in darkness lost,
Long have our souls been tempest tost:
Low at thy feet our sins we lay:
Turn not, O Lord, thy guests away!
BISHOP HEBER.

A NEW YEAR'S THOUGHTS.

SOON another year is gone,

Quickly have the seasons passed;

This we enter now upon,
Will to many prove their last.

Mercy hitherto has spared,

But have mercies been improved?
Let us ask, "Am I prepared,
Should I be this year removed ?"

Life is like a battle-plain,
Thousands fall within our view,
And this year, among the slain,
I perhaps may be, or you.

Some as fair for life as we,

When the former year begun,

Now our eyes no longer see;

They their mortal race have run.

Unto Christians, while below,

With new years new mercies come ;

And the happiest they know,
Is the year that calls them home.

J. NEWTON.

THE PLOUGHING OF THE SWORD.

THE ploughing of the sword

Breaks up the greensward deep,
And stirs the old foundations,
Where the baleful passions sleep :

And then they madly sow
The seeds of bitter strife,
Ambition, wrath, revenge,
And stern contempt of life.

They reap with murderous sickles,
'Mid the shrill trumpet's cry,
Till the mightiest and the lowest,
In equal ruin lie.

The widow's pang, the orphan's tear,
The exulting tyrant's might,
And the cry of souls for ever lost,
Accompany their flight.

Oh! mourning mother earth,

Lift up thy heart and pray,
That the ploughing of the sword,

Be for ever done away :

Pray for the day when promised peace,
Shall reign from shore to shore,
The sword into a ploughshare beat,
And warfare known no more.

MRS. SIGOUrney.

NOVEMBER.

THE autumn wind is moaning low the requiem of the year;

The days are growing short again, the fields forlorn

appear;

The sunny sky is waxing dim, and chill the hazy air;

And waving trees before the breeze are turning brown and bare.

No more 'tis sweet to walk abroad among the ev’ning dews;

The flow'rs have fled from ev'ry path, with all their scents and hues ;

The joyous bird no more is heard, save where his slender song

The robin drops, as meek he hops the wither'd leaves among.

Those wither'd leaves, that slender song, a solemn truth convey,

In wisdom's ear they speak aloud of frailty and de

cay:

They say that man's apportion'd year shall have its winter too,

Shall rise and shine, and then decline, as all around him do.