The heart ever open to Charity's claim,
Uninoved from its purpose by censure and blame,
While vainly alike on her eye and her ear
Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer
How true to our hearts was that beautiful sleeper! With smiles for the joyful, with tears for the weeper!
Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful or gay, With warnings in love to the passing astray.
For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow for them
Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem;
And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove, And the sting of reproof was still tempered by love.
As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven,
As a star that is lost when the daylight is given,
As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss,
She hath passed to the world of the holy from this.
[DANIEL WHEELER, a minister of the Society of Friends, and who had labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this country.]
And worthy of our love!-No more
Thy aged form shall rise before
The hushed and waiting worshipper,
In meek obedience utterance giving
To words of truth, so fresh and living,
That, even to the inward sense,
They bore unquestioned evidence
Of an anointed Messenger!
Or, bowing down thy silver hair
In reverent awfulness of prayer—
The world, its time and sense, shut out-
The brightness of Faith's holy trance
Gathered upon thy countenance,
As if each lingering cloud of doubt-
The cold, dark shadows resting here
In Time's unluminous atmosphere—
Were lifted by an angel's hand,
And through them on thy spiritual eye
Shone down the blessedness on high,
The glory of the Better Land!
While, meet for no good work, the vine
May yet its worthless branches twine.
Who knoweth not that with thee fell
A great man in our Israel?
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,
Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet,
And in thy hand retaining yet
The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell!
Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free,
Across the Neva's cold morass
The breezes from the Frozen Sea
With winter's arrowy keenness pass;
Or, where the unwarning tropic gale
Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,
Or, where the noon-hour's fervid heat
Against Tahiti's mountains beat;
The same mysterious hand which gave
Deliverance upon land and wave,
Tempered for thee the blasts which blew
Ladaga's frozen surface o'er,
And blessed for thee the baleful dew
Of evening upon Eimeo's shore,
Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,
Midst our soft airs and opening flowers
Hath given thee a grave!
Who seeth not as man, whose way
Is not as ours!-'Tis well with thee!
Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay
Disquieted thy closing day,
But, evermore, thy soul could say,
My Father careth still for me!
Called from thy hearth and home-from her,
The last bud on thy household tree,
The last dear one to minister
In duty and in love to thee,
From all which nature holdeth dear,
Feeble with years and worn with pain,
To seek our distant land again,
Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing
The things which should befall thee here,
Whether for labor or for death,
In child-like trust serenely going
To that last trial of thy faith!
Where never shines our Northern star
On that dark waste which Balboa saw
From Darien's mountains stretching far,
So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there
With forehead to its damp wind bare
He bent his mailed knee in awe;
In many an isle whose coral feet
The surges of that ocean beat,
In thy palm shadows, Oahu,
And Honolulu's silver bay,
Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue,
And taro-plains of Tooboonai,
Are gentle hearts, which long shall be
Sad as our own at thought of thee,-
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,
Whose souls in weariness and need
Were strengthened and refreshed by thine, For, blessed by our Father's hand, Was thy deep love and tender care, Thy ministry and fervent prayerGrateful as Eschol's clustered vine To Israel in a weary land!
By thousands round thee, in the hour
Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep,
That He who bade the islands keep
Silence before him, might renew
Their strength with his unslumbering power, They too shall mourn that thou art gone, That never more thy aged lip
Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,
Of those who first, rejoicing, heard
Through thee the Gospel's glorious word—
Seals of thy true apostleship.
And, if the brightest diadem,
Whose gems of glory purely burn
Around the ransomed ones in bliss,
Be evermore reserved for them
Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn
Many to righteousness,-
May we not think of thee, as wearing
That star-like crown of light, and bearing,
Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band,
The fadeless palm-branch in thy hand;
And joining with a seraph's tongue
In that new song the elders sung,
Ascribing to its blessed Giver
Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever !
And though the ways of Zion mourn
When her strong ones are called away,
Who like thyself have calmly borne
The heat and burden of the day,
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth
His ancient watch around us keepeth;
Still sent from his creating hand,
New witnesses for Truth shall stand-
New instruments to sound abroad
The Gospel of a risen Lord;
To gather to the fold once more,
The desolate and gone astray,
The scattered of a cloudy day,
And Zion's broken walls restore
And, through the travail and the toil
Of true obedience, minister
Beauty for ashes, and the oil
Of joy for mourning, unto her!
So shall her holy bounds increase
With walls of praise and gates of peace:
So shall the Vine, which martyr tears
And blood sustained in other years,
With fresher life be clothed upon;
And to the world in beauty show
Like the rose-plant of Jericho,
And glorious as Lebanon!
ERVEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost, when
The need of battling Freedom called for men
To plant the banner on the outer wall;
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress
Melted to more than woman's tenderness,
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post
Fronting the violence of a maddened host,
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