Sacred Poems.

JACOB'S DREAM.

81

What beams of heaven upon the sleeper fell,
What pitying love, no mortal tongue may tell:
Or how their seraph eyes of mercy spoke,
Or what high hopes upon his visions broke.
To future ages, did those hopes extend,
With Israel's God, his promis'd Guide and Friend.

Oh Thou! who to the patriarch's dreaming eye,
Open'd the crystal portals of the sky,
Still hovering near, let guardian spirits stray,
From evil still to keep life's devious way,
Reaching from heaven to earth Thy mercy send;
Sleeping and waking, round our being tend!

PETRA.

"Also Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof." -JEREMIAH, xlvix. 17.

"There shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau ; for the Lord hath spoken it."-OBADIAH, 18.

"Silence reigns all around, save that a solitary owl now and then utters a plaintive cry."

"The bramble o'ertops the summit of the edifices, and covers the base of the columns.”—Journey through the excavated city of Petra, the Edom of the Prophecies, by M. Leon Laborde.

Far in the wilds of Araby,

A silent desert lies;

And while the traveller journeys by,

Are only heard the cries

Of the wild birds, whose weary note

In lonely distance dies.

PETRA.

And widely spread the dreary plains.
The pilgrim journeys on,

There, a soul-chilling silence reigns,

Where ruin rears her throne:

And the wild Arab pauses not,
O'er wrecks of ages gone!

And where is Petra, Edom's crown?

Where are her wise, her great, her fair?

Long, long ago, to dust gone down,

Are the old dwellers there.

And ivy clothes, and bramble shades,
The dust of things that were!

A time will come when Judah's race,
Again shall gathered be,

And build their ancient dwelling place,
From mount, and isle, and sea:

But Edom, quench'd thy glory lies,
No promise lives for thee!

83