THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl

I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see,
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below--
The canticles of love and woe;
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew-
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon wood bird's nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye:
For out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air;
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

682

These temples grew as grows the grass-
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise-
The book itself before me lies-
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger golden lips or mines—
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear—
I see his cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.

Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.

GRAY.

My loved, my honored, much-respected friend!

No mercenary bard his homage pays; With honest pride I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed a friend's esteem and

praise.

To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,

The lowly train in life's sequestered scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless

ways

What Aiken in a cottage would have been; Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier

there, I ween.

enroll.

Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way;
The youngling cottagers retire to rest;
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm re-
quest

That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide
But chiefly in their hearts with grace di-
vine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

abroad.

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings"An honest man's the noblest work of God;"

And, certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road, The cottage leaves the palace far behind. What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is

sent!

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

And, O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From luxury's contagion weak and vile! Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand a wall of fire around their muchloved isle.

O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart

Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part—

missed,

The lips repose our love has kissed:-
But where's their memory's mansion? Ist
Yon churchyard's bowers?
No! in ourselves their souls exist,
A part of ours.

A kiss can consecrate the ground
Where mated hearts are mutual bound;
The spot where love's first links were wound,
That ne'er are riven,

Is hallowed down to earth's profound,
And up to Heaven!

For time makes all but true love old;
The burning thoughts that then were told
Run molten still in memory's mould;
And will not cool
Until the heart itself be cold
In Lethe's pool.

What hallows ground where heroes sleep?
"T is not the sculptured piles you heap!—
In dews that heavens far distant weep
Their turf may bloom,

Or genii twine beneath the deep
Their coral tomb.

But strew his ashes to the wind

Whose sword or voice has served mankind