By Nebo"s lonely mountain, On this side Jordan"s wave,In a vale in the land of Moab There lies a lonely grave;And no man knows that sepulchre, And no man saw it e"er,For the angels of God upturned the sod, And laid the dead man there.
That was the grandest funeral That ever passed on earth;But no man heard the trampling, Or saw the train go forth.
Noiselessly as the daylight
Comes back when night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean"s cheek Grows into the great sun;Noiselessly as the spring-time Her crown of verdure weaves,And all the trees on all the hills Open their thousand leaves;So, without sound of music Or voice of them that wept,Silently down from the mountain"s crown The great procession swept.
Perchance the bald old eagle On grey Beth-peor"s heightOut of his lonely eyrie
Looked on the wondrous sight; Perchance the lion stalkingStill shuns that hallowed spot,
For beast and bird have seen and heard That which man knoweth not.
But, when the warrior dieth, His comrades in the war,With arms reversed and muffled drums,
Follow his funeral car; They show the banners taken,They tell his battles won,
And after him lead his masterless steed, While peals the minute-gun.
Amid the noblest of the land
We lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honoured place, With costly marble dressed,In the great minster transept, Where lights like glories fall,And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings, Along the emblazoned wall.
This was the truest warrior That ever buckled sword;This the most gifted poet That ever breathed a word;And never earth"s philosopher Traced, with his golden pen,On the deathless page, truths half so sage As he wrote down for men.
And had he not high honour- The hillside for a pall,To lie in state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall,And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes, Over his bier to wave,And God"s own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave,In that strange grave without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay
Shall break again-oh, wondrous thought!- Before the judgment-day,And stand with glory wrapt around On the hills he never trod,And speak of the strife that won our life With the Incarnate Son of God.
O lonely grave in Moab"s land !
O dark Beth-peor"s hill !
Speak to these curious hearts of ours And teach them to be still.
God hath His mysteries of grace, Ways that we cannot tell;He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep Of him He loved so well.
Mrs. Alexander.
Author.-Mrs. Cecil Francis Alexander was an Irish writer of hymns; born in County Wicklow, 1818; married the Archbishop of Armagh; died 1895. Other well-known poems of hers are "All Things Bright and Beautiful," "Once in Royal David"s City," " There is a Green Hill far away."General.-This, strangely enough, was Mark Twain"s favourite poem.
The scriptural allusions can be understood by reading the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy; and the geographical allusions by consulting a map of Palestine. " No man knoweth his sepulchre." Write an essay mentioning various men (Sir John Franklin, Ludwig Leichhardt, etc.), to whom this saying would also apply. What claims had Moses to the titles of " truest warrior," " most gifted poet," " sage philosopher"? What served the purposes of pall, tapers, plumes? Who were in the procession? Which is the most majestic stanza? Which breathes of quiet? Which gives the greatest praise to Moses?
LESSON 16
THE gREAT BARRIER REEF
The Northern sea is a sea of pearls, as the Northern land is a land of gold. Who knows what flotsam and jetsam may not yet be discoverable? There are rumours of old coins and ingots of silver found along the East coast of Australia. One might even come upon the remains of a Spanish galleon somewhere between Percy Island and Cape York.
Why not?
The Jardines of Somerset, near Cape York,-they hold the farthest-north cattle station in Australia and have long been owners of pearl-fishing craft,-thirty years ago were rewarded with just such a discovery of treasure trove.
The story goes that Frank Jardine"s lugger, exploring the reef (which is very near the mainland at Somerset), was driven by a sudden wind to take shelter in an inlet cove. As the tide fell, the trained eyes of some sea-going wight fell upon the flukes of a rusted anchor. They presently made fast to this relic of an ancient sea mystery and, in dragging it from the coral, bared a mass of minted coin !
They say that the whole of this sea hoard took severaltrips from Somerset to recover-a booty worth thousands of pounds. It consisted chiefly of Spanish silver dollars and gold coins of the early nineteenth century, none of the dates being later than 1820.
The treasure is said to have belonged to a lost ship, laden with coin for the pa ym en t of Spa n ish tr oops a n d Government officials in Manila. That ship was following the old Spanish route along the Australian coast when she was cast away!
Many a lusty galleon preceded her. Unless the coral hasDrawn by W.S. Wemyss
Spanish Treasure.
grown over their brave old bones, the treasure-seeker along the Barrier stands a safer, if less likely, chance than Captain Tom Cavendish when he lay alongside the Santa Anna on the 4th of November of 1587, and after four hours" fighting found himself in possession of a booty of 122,000 pesos of gold, to say nothing of "divers merchandise " and several sorts of very good wine!
N or a r e ch a n c e ga lleo n s o f New S pa i n o ur o n ly possibilities in the way of Northern salvage. The unfortunate Quetta alone took down 60 tons of silver with her when those sharp coral teeth tore out her iron flanks at the gates of Torres on the fatal night of February 28, 1890. Before the Barrier was charted properly in 1842-6, many a stout vessel was cast away.