"Now the birks to dust may rot, Name o' luvers be forgot,

Nac lads and lasses there ony mair convene ;

But the blythe lilt o' yon air

Keps the bush aboon Traquair, a ded

And the love that ance was there, aye fresh and green,”

THE REV. THOMAS WHYTEHEAD. 1815-1843

THE SECOND DAY OF CREATION

This world I deem

* 1 But a beautiful dream

Of shadows that are not what they seem ; Where visions rise

Giving dim surmise

1

Of the things that shall meet our waking eyes.

Arm of the Lord!

Creating Word!

Whose glory the silent skies record-
Where stands thy name,

In scrolls of flame,

On the firmament's high-shadowing frame !

I gaze o'erhead, and mor
Where Thy hand hath spread

For the waters of Heaven that crystal bed;
And stored the dew

In its deeps of blue,

As beneath the veil of Thy flesh divine
Beams forth the light

<If That were else too b

bright

When we waken from life's mysterious

dream,

And burst the shell *****

Where our spirits dwell

In their wondrous antenatal cell.

I gaze aloof

On the tissued roof.

Where time and space are the warp and woof, i.

Which the King of Kings..!!*

As a curtain flings

O'er the dreadfulness of eternal things.

A tapestried tent

To shade us meant

From the bare everlasting firmament--
Where the blaze of the skies

Comes soft to our eyes

Through a veil of mystical imageries.

But could I see

As in truth they be,

The glories of heaven that encompass me, I should lightly hold

The tissued fold

1

Of that marvellous curtain of blue and gold.

Soon the whole,

Like a parched scroll,

Shall before my amazed sight uproll;
And without a screen

At one burst be seen

The Presence wherein I have ever been.

O! who shall bear
The blinding glare

Of the Majesty that shall meet us there? What eye may gaze

On the unveiled blaze

Of the light-girdled throne of the Ancient

of Days?

Christ, us aid!

Himself be our shade,

That in that dread day we be not dismay'd.

M

France ;

As when they went for Palestine, with Louis at their head,

And many a waving banner, and the Oriflamme outspread ;

And many a burnished galley with its blaze of armour shone

In the ports of sunny Cyprus and the Acre of St. John;—

And many a knight who signed the cross, as he saw the burning sands

With a prayer for those whom he had left in green and fairer lands.

God aid them all, God them assoil, for few shall see again

Streams like their own, their azure Rhone, or swift and silver Seine.

And they are far from their Navarre, and from their soft Garonne,

The Lords of Foix and Grammont, and the Count of Carcassonne ;

For they have left, those Southron knights, the clime they loved so well—

The feasts of fair Montpellier and the Toulouse Carousel,

And the chase in early morning, when the keen and pleasant breeze

Came cold to the cheek from many a peak of the snowy Pyrenees.

Oh never yet was theme so meet for rounde

or romance

As the ancient aristocracy and chivalry of France ;

As when they lay before Tournay, and the Grand Monarque was there,

With the bravest of his warriors, and the fairest of his fair;

And the sun that was his symbol, and on his army shone,

Was in lustre, and in splendour, and in light itself outdone,

For the lowland and the highland were gleaming as of old,

When England vied with France in pride, on the famous Field of Gold,

And morn, and noon, and evening, and all the livelong night,

Were the sound of ceaseless music and the echo of delight.

And but for Vauban's waving arm and the answering cannonade,