There's a fount about to stream,
There's a light about to beam,
There's a warmth about to glow,
There's a flower about to blow;
There's a midnight blackness changing
Into gray;

Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!

Once the welcome light has broken.
Who shall say

What the unimagined glories
Of the day?

What the evil that shall perish
In its ray?

Aid the dawning, tongue and pen;
Aid it, hopes of honest men ;
Aid it, paper-aid it, type—

Aid it, for the hour is ripe,

And our earnest must not slacken
Into play.

Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!

Lo! a cloud's about to vanish
From the day;

And a brazen wrong to crumble
Into clay.

Lo! the right's about to conquer
Clear the way!

With the Right shall many more
Enter smiling at the door;
With the giant Wrong shall fall
Many others, great and small,
That for ages long have held us
For their prey.

Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!

Sever'd-were it sever'd only

By an idle thought of strife,
Such as time may knit together;
Not the broken chord of life!

O my heart! that once so truly
Kept another's time and tune,-
Heart, that kindled in the morning,
Look around thee in the noon!
Where are they who gave the impulse
To thy earliest thought and flow!
Look across the ruined garden-
All are withered, dropped, or low!

*

*

O! I fling my spirit backward,

*

And I pass o'er years of pain;
All I loved is rising round me,
All the lost returns again.

Born 1813

Robert Murray M'Cheyne. {Died 1843

A DEVOTED and talented minister of the Church of Scotland in Dundee, who wrote some religious poetry imbued with the deepest devotional feeling,

TO YONDER SIDE.

THE Cooling breath of evening woke

The waves of Galilee,

Till on the shore the waters broke

In softest melody.

"Now launch the bark," the Saviour cried,

The chosen twelve stood by,

"And let us cross to yonder side,

Where the hills are steep and high."