Never see the country did you?
Flowers growin' everywhere!
Sometime when you're better, Joey,
Mebbe I kin take you there.
Flowers in heaven! 'M—I spose so;
Dunno much about it though;
Ain't as fly as wot I might be
On them topics, little Joe.
But I've heerd it hinted somewheres,
That in heaven's golden gates,
Things is everlastin' cheerful,
B'lieve that's wot the Bible states.
Likewise, there folks don't get hungry;
So good people when they dies,
Finds themselves well-fixed for ever—
Joe, my boy, wot ails your eyes?
Thought they looked a Jittle singler.
Oh no! don't you have no fear;
Heaven was made for such as you is—
Joe, what makes you look so queer?
Here—wake up! Oh, don't look that way!
Joe, my boy, hold up your head!
Here's your flowers you dropped 'em, Joey.
Oh, my Joe! can he be dead?
Peleg Arkwright.
* * * * *
NIAGARA.
The thoughts are strange that crowd upon my brain
As I look upward to thee! It would seem
As if God poured thee from His hollow hand,
And hung His bow upon thine awful front,
And spake in that loud voice that seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake,
The sound of many waters; and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,
And notch His centuries in the eternal rock!
Deep calleth unto deep, and what are we
That hear the questions of that voice sublime?
O what are all the notes that ever rung
From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make,
In his short life, to thine unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him
Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains? A light wave
That runs and whispers of thy Maker's might!
John G. C. Brainard.
* * * * *