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THE CITY ABOVE.

THE CITY ABOVE.

H, Heaven is nearer than mortals think,
When they look with a trembling dread,

At the misty future that stretches on
From the quiet home of the dead.
'Tis no lone isle in a boundless main,

No brilliant but distant shore,

Where the lovely ones who are called away

Must go to return no more.

No! Heaven is near us, the mighty veil

Of mortality blinds the eye,

That we cannot see the angel bands

On the shores of eternity:

Yet oft, in the hours of holy thought,

To the thirsting soul is given

That power to pierce, through the mists of sense,

To the beauteous scenes of heaven.

Then very near seem its pearly gates,

And sweetly its harpings fall,
Till the soul is restless to soar away,

And longs for the angel call.

The eye that shuts in a dying hour

Shall open, the next, in bliss;

The welcome shall sound in the heavenly world

Ere the farewell is hushed in this.

ANONYMOUS.

OT a care hath Marian Lee
Dwelling by the sounding sea;
Her young life's a flowing way,
Without toil from day to day;

Without bodings for the morrow ;

Marian was not made for sorrow!

Like the summer billows wild,
Leaps the happy-hearted child!