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AND HE WAS NOT: FOR GOD TOOK HIM."

"SERVANT of God, well done! Rest from thy loved employ ; The battle fought, the victory won, Enter thy Master's joy."

-The voice at midnight came,

He started up to hear;

A mortal arrow pierced his frame,
He fell,-but felt no fear.

Tranquil amidst alarms,

It found him on the field;
A veteran slumbering on his arms,
Beneath his red-cross shield.

His sword was in his hand,

Still warm with recent fight, Ready that moment, at command,

Through rock and steel to smite.

It was a two-edged blade,

Of heavenly temper keen;

And double were the wounds it made,
Where'er it glanced between :

'Twas death to sin,-'twas life
To all who mourned for sin;
It kindled, and it silenced, strife,
Made war, and peace, within.

Oft with its fiery force

His arm had quelled the foe, And laid, resistless in his course,

The alien armies low.

Bent on such glorious toils, The world to him was loss; Yet all his trophies, all his spoils, He hung upon the Cross.

At midnight came the cry,
"To meet thy God prepare!"

He woke, and caught his Captain's eye;
Then, strong in faith and prayer,

His spirit, with a bound,

Left its encumbering clay;

His tent, at sun-rise, on the ground,

A darkened ruin lay.

The pains of death are past,

Labour and sorrow cease;

And, life's long warfare closed at last, His soul is found in peace.

Soldier of Christ, well done! Praise be thy new employ; And while eternal ages run, Rest in thy Saviour's joy.

66

LIKE A SHADOW THAT DEPARTETH."

THIS shadow on the dial's face,

That steals, from day to day, With slow, unseen, unceasing pace, Moments, and months, and years away; This shadow, which, in every clime, Since light and motion first began,

Hath held its course sublime;

What is it? mortal man!

It is the scythe of time:
-A shadow only to the eye;

Yet, in its calm career,

It levels all beneath the sky;

And still, through each succeeding year,

Right onward, with resistless power,

Its stroke shall darken every hour,

Till nature's race be run,

And time's last shadow shall eclipse the sun.

Nor only o'er the dial's face,

This silent phantom, day by day, With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,

Steals moments, months, and years away; From hoary rock, and aged tree,

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls,
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea,
From every blade of grass, it falls;
For still where'er a shadow sweeps,
The scythe of time destroys,
And man at every footstep weeps

O'er evanescent joys;

Life's flowrets glittering with the dew of morn,
Fair for a moment, then for ever shorn :
-Ah! soon, beneath the inevitable blow,
I too shall lie, in dust and darkness low.

Then time, the conqueror, will suspend
His scythe, a trophy, o'er my tomb,
Whose moving shadow shall portend

Each frail beholder's doom.

O'er the wide earth's illumined space,

Though time's triumphant flight be shown,

The truest index on its face,

Points from the churchyard-stone.

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