The voices of adoring worlds around,
Comes there a breath of more delightful praise
Than the faint notes his poor disciples raise,
Ere on the treacherous main they sink to rest,
Secure as leaning on their Master's breast?

Time's shadows brightening through eternity;
Love-God's own love in his pure breast enshrined;
Love-love to man the magnet of his mind;
Sublimer schemes maturing in his thought
Than ever statesman plann'd or warrior wrought:
While, with rejoicing tears, and rapturous sighs,

They sleep: but memory wakes; and dreams To heaven ascends their morning sacrifice.1

array

Night in a lively masquerade of day.

The land they seek, the land they leave behind,
Meet on mid-ocean in the plastic mind:
One brings forsaken home and friends so nigh,
That tears in slumber swell the unconscious eye;
The other opens, with prophetic view,
Perils, which e'en their fathers never knew,
(Though school'd by suffering, long inured to toil,
Outcast and exiles from their natal soil;)
Strange scenes, strange men; untold, untried
distress;

Pain, hardships, famine, cold, and nakedness,
Diseases; death in every hideous form,

On shore, at sea, by fire, by flood, by storm;
Wild beasts and wilder men;-unmoved with fear,
Health, comfort, safety, life, they count not dear,
May they but hope a Saviour's love to show,
And warn one spirit from eternal woe:
Nor will they faint; nor can they strive in vain,
Since thus to live is Christ, to die is gain.

"Tis morn: the bathing moon her lustre shrouds;
Wide o'er the east impends an arch of clouds,
That the ocean; while the infant dawn
spans
Peeps through the portal o'er the liquid lawn,
That ruffled by an April gale appears,
Between the gloom and splendour of the spheres,
Dark-purple as the moorland heath, when rain
Hangs in low vapours o'er the autumnal plain :
Till the full sun, resurgent from the flood,
Looks on the waves, and turns them into blood;
But quickly kindling, as his beams aspire,
The lambent billows play in forms of fire.
Where is the vessel?-Shining through the light,
Like the white sea-fowl's horizontal flight,
Yonder she wings, and skims, and cleaves her way
Through refluent foam and iridescent spray.

Lo! on the deck with patriarchal grace,
Heaven in his bosom opening o'er his face,
Stands Christian David;-venerable name!
Bright in the records of celestial fame,

On earth obscure;-like some sequester'd star,
That rolls in its Creator's beams afar,
Unseen by man, till telescopic eye,
Sounding the blue abysses of the sky,
Draws forth its hidden beauty into light,
And adds a jewel to the crown of night.
Though hoary with the multitude of years,
Unshorn of strength, between his young compeers
He towers;-with faith, whose boundless glance

can see

Greenland their port;-Moravia was their home.
Sprung from a race of martyrs; men who bure
The cross on many a Golgotha of yore;
When first Sclavonian tribes the truth received,
And princes, at the price of thrones, believed;
When Waldo, flying from the apostate west,
In German wilds his righteous cause confess'd;
-When Wickliffe, like a rescuing angel, found
The dungeon where the Word of God lay bound,
Unloosed its chains, and led it by the hand,
In its own sunshine, through his native land:
When Huss-the victim of perfidious foes,
To heaven upon a fiery chariot rose;
And, ere he vanish'd, with a prophet's breath,
Foretold the immortal triumphs of his death:

-When Ziska, burning with fanatic zeal,
Exchanged the Spirit's sword for patriot steel,
And through the heart of Austria's thick array
To Tabor's summit stabb'd resistless way;
The world's Redeemer stood) his rage forgot ;
But there (as if transfigured on the spot
Deposed his arms and trophies in the dust,
Wept like a babe, and placed in God his trust.
While prostrate warriors kiss'd the hallow'd
And lay, like slain, in silent ranks around:
ground,

-When mild Gregorius, in a lowlier field,
As brave a witness, as unwont to yield,
As Ziska's self, with patient footsteps trod
A path of suffering, like the Son of God,
And nobler palms by meek endurance won,
Than if his sword had blazed from sun to sun:

Though nature fail'd him on the racking wheel,
Rapp'd into bliss from ecstacy of pain,
He felt the joys which parted spirits feel;
Imagination wander'd o'er a plain :
Fair in the midst, beneath a morning sky,
A Tree its ample branches bore on high,
With fragrant bloom, and fruit delicious hung,
While birds beneath the foliage fed and sung;
All glittering to the sun with diamond dew,
O'er sheep and kine a breezy shade it threw;
A lovely boy, the child of hope and prayer,
With crook and shepherd's pipe, was watching
there;

At hand three venerable forms were seen,
In simple garb, with apostolic mien,

1 The names of the first three Moravian missionaries

to Greenland were Christian David, Matthew Stach, and Christian Stach.

Who'd mark the distant fields convulsed with | That Church, which Satan's legions thought destrife,

-The guardian cherubs of that Tree of Life;
Not arm'd, like Eden's host, with flaming brands,
Alike to friends and foes they stretch'd their hands
In sign of peace, and, while Destruction spread
His path with carnage, welcomed all who fled:
-When poor Comenius, with his little flock,
Escaped the wolves, and, from the boundary
rock,

Cast o'er Moravian hills a look of woe,

Saw the green vales expand, the waters flow,
And happier years revolving in his mind,
Caught every sound that murmur'd on the wind;
As if his eye could never thence depart,
As if his ear were seated in his heart,

And his full soul would thence a passage break,
To leave the body, for his country's sake;
While on his knees he pour'd the fervent prayer,
That God would make that martyr-land his care,
And nourish in its ravaged soil a root

Of Gregor's tree, to bear perennial fruit.

stroy'd,

Her name extinct, her place for ever void,
Alive once more, respired her native air,
But found no freedom for the voice of prayer:
Again the cowl'd oppressor clank'd his chains,
Flourish'd his scourge, and threaten'd bonds and
pains,

(His arm enfeebled could no longer kill,
But in his heart he was a murderer still:)
Then Christian David, strengthen'd from above,
Wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove;
Bold as a lion on his Master's part,
In zeal a seraph, and a child in heart;
Pluck'd from the gripe of antiquated laws,
(Even as a mother from the felon-jaws
Of a lean wolf, that bears her babe away,
With courage beyond nature, rends the prey,)
The little remnant of that ancient race:

-Far in Lusatian woods they found a place;
There where the sparrow builds her busy nest,
And the clime-changing swallow loves to rest,
Thine altar, God of hosts!-there still appear

His prayer was heard:-that Church, through The tribes to worship, unassail'd by fear;

ages past,

Assail'd and rent by Persecution's blast;
Whose sons no yoke could crush, no burthen tire,
Unawed by dungeons, tortures, sword, and fire,
(Less proof against the world's alluring wiles,
Whose frowns have weaker terrors than its smiles;)
--That Church o'erthrown, dispersed, unpeopled,
dead,

Oft from the dust of ruin raised her head,

And rallying round her feet, as from their graves,
Her exiled orphans, hid in forest-caves;
Where, 'midst the fastnesses of rocks and glens,
Banded like robbers, stealing from their dens,
By night they met, their holiest vows to pay,
As if their deeds were dark, and shunn'd the day;
While Christ's revilers, in his seamless robe,
And parted garments, flaunted round the globe;
From east to west while Priestcraft's banners
flew,

And harness'd kings his iron chariot drew:
-That Church advanced, triumphant o'er the
ground

Not like their fathers, vex'd from age to age
By blatant Bigotry's insensate rage,
Abroad in every place, in every hour
Awake, alert, and ramping to devour.
No; peaceful as the spot where Jacob slept,
And guard all night the journeying angels kept,
Herrnhut yet stands amidst her shelter'd bowers;

-The Lord has set his watch upon her towers! Soon, homes of humble form, and structure rude,

Raised sweet society in solitude:

And the lorn traveller there, at fall of night,
Could trace from distant hills the spangled light
Which now from many a cottage window stream'd,
Or in full glory round the chapel beam'd;
While hymning voices, in the silent shade,
Music of all his soul's affections made;
Where through the trackless wilderness, erewhile,
No hospitable ray was known to smile,-
Or if a sudden splendour kindled joy,
'Twas but a meteor dazzling to destroy:
While the wood echo'd to the hollow owl,

Where all her conquering martyrs had been The fox's cry, or wolf's lugubrious howl.

crown'd,

Fearless her foes' whole malice to defy,
And worship God in liberty,-or die :

For truth and conscience, oft she pour'd her blood,
And firmest in the fiercest conflicts stood,
Wresting from bigotry the proud control
Claim'd o'er the sacred empire of the soul,
Where God, the judge of all, should fill the throne,
And reign, as in His universe, alone.

'Twas thus through centuries she rose and fell;
At length victorious seem'd the gates of hell;
But founded on a rock, which cannot move-
The eternal rock of her Redeemer's love-

Unwearied as the camel, day by day,
Tracks through unwater'd wilds his doleful way,
Yet in his breast a cherish'd draught retains,
To cool the fervid current in his veins,
While from the sun's meridian realms he brings
The gold and gems of Ethiopian kings:
So Christian David, spending yet unspent,
On many a pilgrimage of mercy went;
Through all their haunts his suffering brethren
sought,

And safely to that land of promise brought;
While in his bosom, on the toilsome road,

A secret well of consolation flow'd,