THE WINGED WORSHIPERS.

C. SPRAGUE.

AY, guiltless pair,

What seek ye from the fields of heaven! Ye have no need of prayer,

Ye have no sins to be forgiven.

Why perch ye here,
Where mortals to their Maker bend?
Can your pure spirits fear

The God ye never could offend?

Ye never knew

The crimes for which we come to weep:
Penance is not for you,
Blessed wanderers of the upper deep.

To you 'tis given

To wake sweet nature's untaught lays;
Beneath the arch of heaven

To chirp away a life of praise.

Then spread each wing,

Far, far above, o'er lakes and lands,
And join the choirs that sing

In

yon blue dome not reared with hands.

Or, if ye stay,

To note the consecrated hour,
Teach me the airy way,

And let me try your envied power.

Above the crowd,

On upward wings could I but fly, I'd bathe in yon bright cloud, the sky.

And seek the stars that gem

'Twere heaven indeed,

Through fields of trackless light to soar, On nature's charms to feed,

And nature's own great God adore.

THE ISLE OF THE LONG AGO.

BENJ. F. TAYLOR.

[By permission of S. C. Griggs & Co.]
A WONDERFUL. stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
And a boundless sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends with the ocean of years.

How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow, And the summers like buds between,

And the year in the sheaf, so they come and they go,

On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow,

As it glides in the shadow and sheen.

There's a magical Isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the Junes with the roses are straying.

And the name of that Isle is the Long Ago,

And we bury our treasures there;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow;
There are heaps of dust-but we loved them so!
There are trinkets and tresses of hair;

There are fragments of song that nobody sings,

And a part of an infant's prayer;

There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings; There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the garments that she used to wear.

There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the Mirage is lifted in air,

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river is fair.

O remember'd for aye, be the blessed Isle,
All the day of our life until night;
When the evening comes with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
May that "Greenwood" of soul be in sight!

THERE COMES A TIME.

There comes a time, or soon or late,
When every word unkindly spoken,
Returns with all the force of fate,

To bear reproof from spirits broken,
Who slumber in that tranquil rest,
Which waking cares no more molest.

Oh! were the wealth of worlds our own, We freely would the treasures yield, eyes that here their last have shone, If lips in endless silence sealed,

If

One look of love o'er us might cast,
Might breathe forgiveness to the past.

When anger arms the thoughtless tongue,
To wound the feelings of a friend,
Oh! think ere yet his heart be wrung,

In what remorse thy wrath may end;
Withhold to-day the words of hate,
To-morrow it may be too late.