MY MOTHER'S BOOK.

OH Book! what tender thoughts of olden time Come with thee-what a load of pensive joy : I feel as if I heard the very chime

Of the glad brook I loved so when a boy.

This was my mother's Book-the one she read
Within the garden's leafiest corner set,
When Sunday peace was o'er the village spread,
In our old home, beside the rivulet.

Fair shines the moon o'er village dotted plains
That silent sleep beneath o'erlooking wolds,
Embowering lonely farms and antique fanes,

And bosky dells, and lanes, and sheltered folds.

But ah! my birthplace was a fairer scene,

Within the folds of mountains far away,

Where waters rushed the clefted rocks between,
And lifted up their voices night and day.

A land of ivied crags, and dancing brooks,
And purple heath, and valleys green and gay,
And dim old woods with fairy wild rose nooks,—
O home among the mountains far away!

But more than all my heart is still with thee,
And long-remembered lessons of my youth

Revive, as when I sat beside thy knee,

And thy sweet love was guide to light and truth.

No learned or subtle arguments were thine,
Or points of doctrine obscure and deep,
But truths that with the human heart entwine,

And in their folds our hopes entreasured keep.

Truths of the heart that take their root and spring

From the deep soil of human want and woe, And o'er them both a vernal mantle fling,

As flowers enwreath o'er mouldering heaps below.

Truths that are nourished by the thoughts of graves,
And death-bed scenes, and separations long,
Whose still small voices charm the angry waves
Of worldly striving with a dulcet song.

Truths witnessed to by Him who trod of old,
In grief and pain the Galilean shore,

And filled with the light of hope, as lamps of gold,
Trimmed and rekindled that were dim before.

So we, with longings in the heart enshrined,
Which find on dreary earth no place of rest,
Come unto Thee, oh Saviour! and we find,

What most we longed for, given at Thy behest.

Find that our Father cannot mock desires

That long for things affectionate and good, That heavenly truths shine out with brighter fires When earthly things are deeplier understood.

What we so longed for bursts upon our sight, Reading the record of Thy truth and love; We feel Thou could'st not leave us to the night, Who look so for the Day-spring from above.

And so we joy as one whose vision keen Surveys the planets in their aerial course, And, watching long, finds in the deep serene A small disturbance from an unknown force.

And sees in his solution, far away,

Some outer planet threading round the maze, And watching closer, on some evening grey,

Joys to behold it bursting on his gaze!

And thou didst teach me from this olden Book,

By thy own loving heart interpreted, Where only for the golden truth to look, And how unto that truth we must be led.

Full often in the tangled maze I have trod,
Abstruse and deep of controversial lore,

And found it led no nearer unto God,
But to the point I started from before.

And then I turned with wearied heart and brain, As if a voice had called me back from thee, And found a solace and delight again,

In truths I learned beside a mother's knee.

Even as a wanderer in distant climes

Revisits once again his boyhood's scene, Reclines again beneath paternal limes,

Or joins the pastime on the village green