POETRY.

A VISION OF PEACE.

IT was a noise of al;awma and tuned flutes

That swell'd and rang and floated in the air, With myriad interchangeable salutes Of note with note in complication rare, And Peace was there.

It was a waving of unnumbered tresses Of leaves and bending boughs and softened shine Of rays transfused into the dim recesses, Palpitant type of the quick breath Divine,— That was her shrine.

It was a heaven of grandly wheeling stars And coruscating meteors and the light Which trails from aether-darting comet cars, And Peace was there revealed to open sight In raiment bright.

Lo ! 'tis a world purged clean from all alloy,

And star-crown'd in the soft, blue air on high, Throned by the illimitable fount of joy, See where she sits and smiles with radiant eye, Eternally.

Awake our souls ! awake the harp and lute !

Cast golden crowns before that final throne! The breakleas song shall never more be mute ; Hymn the white vestal with a silver tone !

She reigns alone !

Dreams all. Those tender eyes are sad, and stern, And lighten only to approve the sword Which flashes where the war-fires hotliest burn, And crimson stains incarnadine the sward For cleansing poured.

One glance of pitying scorn the weaklings earn Who in her name bid wrong and rapine reign. Woe to them if they have no souls to learn, Offended Peace treats with a high disdain Their babblings vain. But most she scathes with a celestial wrath The slaves of wealth and selfishness and ease, Whose higher nature rusts in senseless sloth, And in that they wax fat and rich, cry peace Where is no peace.

While wrong remains, God curses all repose, And lurid is the dead, unnatural light, Phosphoric, that from putrefaction glows.

It lights the lull that bodes a coming fight, Dread, blinding bright.

Know verily that thunder-charged air Is not at rest, but strung for deadly strife ; God's elements, in fearful tension there, Must grapple to set free the prison'd life In all things rife.

Mountains must be made low, rough places plain, Voices must cry in the waste wilderness, Baptising blood must fall in awful rain Ere angel tongues proclaim the Prince of Peace And fightings cease.