L

LITTLE CHILDREN.

OVE divine its word hath spoken;
Hath its life expreffed ;-

To the earnest, seeking spirit,
It hath given a test,
Marking the inheritors

Of its heavenly rest.

Oh, the bleffing, the rich bleffing!

Is it thine and mine?

Who are they, the true recipients

Of the Love Divine?
Little children, little children!
Not in years alone →
Little children in the spirit,
These He calls his own.

Have ye love, like little children?
Have ye faith as they?

Do your angels, near the Father,

See his face alway?

Then are ye within the kingdom!

Hold the bleffing up!

This the "mystic hydrome

In life's golden cup.

'T was o'erturned when Eden's exiles

Closed the garden door,

But refilled again, forever
Running o'er and o'er,
With a new, divine elixir,
Emanating power,

Circling life with noble meaning

And angelic lore,

When the Holy Dove descended

Upon Jordan's shore.

Little children, young and aged,
Bear the bleffing up!
Pour around the life elixir,

From your golden cup!
Love is the divine reftorer
Of the souls of men;
This the new, perpetual Eden
We must seek again.

Love is the eternal childhood;

Hither all must come,

Who the kingdom would inherit

Of the Heavenly Home.

WHEN KINDRED MEET TOGETHER.

OW happy is it and how sweet,

HOW

When kindred kind appear!

And when in unity we meet

As we obligéd are!

Each bleffing which on one doth fall,

Will multipliéd be;

And prove a bleffing to us all,

As long as we agree.

As from high hills a fhower of rain

Along the valleys trills,

And as they vapour up again

A moift'ning for those hills:
So kindred, whether poor or rich,
If truly kind they prove,
Each other may advantage much,
By interchange of love.

The flendereft threads together wound,
Will make the strongest band;

And smalleft rods, if closely bound,
The bender's force withstand.

But if we those asunder take,
Their ftrength departs away;
And what a giant could not break,
A little infant may.

So if in concord we abide,

If true in heart we prove, We may the more be fortified By interchange of love.

Let us therefore, who now have met,
Observe this leffon so,

That we do not the same forget,
When we apart shall go.

Let none of us delight to tell,
Or pleasure take to hear,
Wherein his kinsman doth not well,

Or faulty may appear.

But let each of us our own crimes, With others' errors weigh;

And seek the fitteft means and times, To mend them what we may.

If malice injure any one

To whom allied we are,

Let us repute the wrong as done
To every person here.

Yea, if a grief, a loss, a fhame,

To one of us befall;

Let us be tender of the same,

As grievous to us all.

So we that are but linked yet
In bands of common kind,
Shall at the laft be nearer knit
By virtues of the mind.
And when the ties of carnal kin

By death fhall be undone;
We that have so alliéd been,

Shall be forever one.

George Wither.

T

HERE is a plant that in its cell
All trembling seems to stand,

And bends its ftalk, and folds its leaves
From each approaching hand:

And thus there is a conscious nerve
Within the human breast,

That from the rash and careless hand
Sinks and retires diftreft.

The preffure rude, the touch severe,
Will raise within the mind

A nameless thrill, a secret tear,
A torture undefined.

Oh, you who are by nature form'd

Each thought refined to know!