Outbreaking as the angels did,
For a Redeemer born!
How merrily they call afar,
To cot and baron's hall,
With holly decked and mistletoe,
To keep the festival!
The chimes of England, how they peal
From tower and Gothic pile,
Where hymn and swelling anthem fill
The dim cathedral aisle;
Where windows bathe the holy light
On priestly heads that falls,
And stains the florid tracery
Of banner-dighted walls!
And then, those Easter bells, in spring,
Those glorious Easter chimes!
How loyally they hail thee round,
Old Queen of holy times!
From hill to hill like sentinels,
Responsively they cry,
And sing the rising of the Lord,
From vale to mountain high.
I love ye, chimes of Motherland,
With all this soul of mine,
And bless the Lord that I am sprung
Of good old English line:
And like a son I sing the lay
That England's glory tells;
For she is lovely to the Lord,
For you, ye Christian bells!
And heir of her historic fame,
Though far away my birth,
Thee, too, I love, my Forest-land,
The joy of all the earth;
For thine thy mother's voice shall be,
And here, where God is king,
With English chimes, from Christian spires,
The wilderness shall ring.
ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE.
* * * * *
THE OLD VILLAGE CHOIR.
I have fancied, sometimes, the Bethel-bent beam,
That trembled to earth in the patriarch's dream,
Was a ladder of song in that wilderness rest,
From the pillar of stone to the blue of the blest.
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