Thanks to my God for thee!
Without thy smiles t'were death to live,
And joy to cease to be:
Oh, bitterest drop in woe's full cup--
To have no friend in need!
To struggle on, with grief alone--
Were agony indeed!

August. WILLIAM C. RICHARDS.

* * * * *

THE BALANCE OF LIFE.

All daring sympathy--clear-sighted love--
Is, from its source, a ray of endless bliss;
Self has no place in the pure world above,
Its shadows vanish in the strife of this.

The toil--the tumult--the sharp struggle o'er,--
The casket breaks;--men say, "A martyr dies!"
The death--the martyrdom--has past before:
The soul, transfigured, finds its native skies.

The good--the ill--we vainly strive to weigh
With Reason's scales, hung in the mists of Time:
Yet child-like Faith the balance doth survey,
Held high in ether, by a hand sublime.

May, 1850. HERMA.