Page 246 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

Lighting the grisimess of the sanguine plain
With splendors that had glorified a throne*

Above: the altar of God's sacred place,
A watchful star, it !it the passing years,
With radiance falling osi each siipoliam.’s face,
Gleaming alike in love's and sorrow's tears,

Til! swept the war-tide through the sun-lit vales
Leading from Jord?.n and the western sea,
And til? fierce ho=t cf Titus filled the gales
With jubilant shouts, and songs of victory.

Then came the day when ever all the walls
The Romans surged, and Death laughed loud and high,
Arid tliere was wailing in the paEaee halls,
And sounds of lamentations in the sky.

Torn from its pi arc, it lay within the hand
Of J.Vobus, whose keen sword had rent- a way,
With vapid blows, aiiiid the priestly band
Whose piteous prayers moaned through that dreadful
day.

And there, beside the wall, lie stopped to gaze
Upon the fortune that would give his life
The home t.nd rest that come with bounteous days,
And bring reward for toil and war-like strife.

There was no cloud in all heaven's lustrous blue,
Yet suddenly a red flash cleft the air,
And ihe dark shadow held a deeper h;j<>—
A dead man, with an cm ply hand, ];jy there

Thomas S tephen's C o l l ie r ,