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Speak then, thou voice of God within,
Thou of the deep low tone!

Answer me, through life's restless din,
Where is the Spirit flown?—

And the voice answered-Be thou still!
Enough to know is given:

Clouds, winds, and stars, their part fulfil;
Thine is to trust in Heaven.

PROSPECT IN LIFE.

VALPY.

FOR the proper regulation of life, it is necessary that you should form a proper estimate of it; and of that Providence by which all human events are directed. This life is a state of trial, intended, in the designs of Eternal Wisdom, to train you up to another and better world, and to determine your station in it. In this life you will be exposed to difficulties, vexation, sorrow, and distress. Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward. In the season of youth, when life smiles in the imagination as stored with pleasure and decked with prosperity, we expect an unruffled calm, and a perpetual sunshine. The experience of a few years throws a gloomy damp over the flattering prospect: the cloud of anxiety arises; the storm of misfortune blows keen and

T

gloomy; and we are at last convinced that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Turn from one situation to another; shift from one place to another: you will find care and misery attending your steps. You feel the evils of poverty; you wish to possess riches: if you succeed, you will be followed by the same anxieties; the cause only will be changed. Riches will increase your cares, new sorrows will arise from the employment of your property. You wish to emerge from obscurity: if you become great, you will become the prey of corrosive jealousy and opposition. You are miserable because you have no children: if you become a parent, you will be tormented by solicitude for your children-by their misconduct, by their death. You dislike your profession: change it; you will find unexpected thorns in the new path, which seemed to you strewed with roses. For all anxieties, for all evils, for all distress, there is only one remedy, resignation to the will of God. In the midst of the deepest sorrow, there are consolations of soothing efficacy. "Thy will be done."—"It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good."-"I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and thou of very faithfulness hast caused me to be troubled."-"O let thy merciful kindness be my comfort!" The time will come when you will acknowledge, with tears of gratitude, that the blow that beats you to the ground--that the disaster which rends your heart with anguish were intended by the Wise Disposer

of events, for purposes of mercy and love. Thus, instead of presumptuously raising the voice of complaint against Providence because all things do not happen according to our wishes, we shall, on the contemplation of that wisdom and mercy which governs the world, "Praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doeth for the children of men."

RETROSPECTIONS.

ANON.

"What is it, in youth, that sheds a dewy light round the evening star? that makes the daisy look so bright? that perfumes the hyacinth? that embalms the first kiss of love? It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the bliss that we fondly believe is still in store for us. The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to bear the weight of love and hope which presses on it."-Hazlitt.

YE happy, sun-bright halcyon days,

In which my planet rose,

A morning star of hope, and chased,
Like night-clouds, all my woes.
Though ye are gone-and that bright star
In stormy skies has set,

Yet objects in your light appeared,

Which I can ne'er forget.

Oft do I see your shadowy forms,

In Memory's airy halls;

And Fancy's talisman each shade

Almost to life recalls:

But like some lovely dream that flies
Ere morning's watch is set,
The charm dissolving on my view,
Still tells me to forget.

Forget?-ah no! the sun that rose
Your first grey clouds to gild;
The birds that in your noontide flight
The groves with music filled;
And when, from Hesper's radiant vase,

The flowery meads were wet,

The wind that mourned the fading light,
Forbid me to forget.

And yet 'tis not to your bright clouds
The fond remembrance clings;
Nor Nature's sylvan song that rose

Upon your noontide wings;

Nor Zephyr's airy harp that sighed

So sweetly when ye set;

-'Tis one, who shared those sweets with me,

That makes me not forget.

Beyond the portals of the past,

The morning long has fled,
On which the spell of strange delight
Around my soul was shed:

As in the fairy haunts of thought,
Her well-known form I met-

Hope's first faint dawn, that then arose,
I never can forget.

And though 'twas on a stormy day
Our loves were first revealed;

No sunny bank, no crystal stream,
Nor daisy-spangled field

Was witness; but the thunder-cloud
Its fairy signet set;

Still joys came with that awful sign,
Dear to my spirit yet.

But when Spring's latest flowers inhale
The balmy breath of May,
How blithely in our favourite walks

The moments passed away:
Each object that we gazed on then,
In Thought's lone vigils yet
Seems to look forth, through Memory's mist,
And say "Canst thou forget?"

One happy walk-when Morn all things

In orient gold arrayed,

And the gay sons of Summer's day
Their insect wings displayed,
As gay we glided o'er the plains:-
And though our bliss hath met
A blight, like theirs in Autumn's gale,
Still I can ne'er forget.

Then how, when on the western hills

Cytheria's watch-fire glowed,

We climbed our own sweet mount, and viewed The gossamer that rode

Lightly along the evening's breeze;

Or watched the sun that set,

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