Part I

Listen ! it is the Passing Bell.
Lift up thy heart to God and pray.
A soul is passing, —who can tell
How prayer may help it on its way

Where art thou ? In the busy mart,
Amid the worshippers of gold !
Tempted to play some subtle part
Through pretext but thine own to hold !

Strong in the keenness of thy wit,
A giant amid smaller minds,
With thy large brain prepared to hit
Down to thine ends the weaker kinds !

Thy brow is flushing at the prize ;
Thy hand is grasping at the gain ;
Thou dost but walk with open eyes :
The wilful blind need not complain.

Thou wouldst not take, by force or stealth,
What is not lawfully thy right ;
But, in the race for pow'r and wealth,
No wrong is done by mental might.

How poor, though plausible, the plea
Which for thyself thou dost prepare,
Striving to make thy conscience be
Calm as if all were just and fair !

Listen ! there's coming on the breeze
A voice to help thee in thy need,
And press on thee the juster pleas
Which truth, for God, delights to plead.

Listen ! it is the Passing Bell ;
Some sinner, near his close of day,
Asks for thy prayers ; and who can tell
How prayer may help him on his way !

Within the closely curtain'd room
Which cautious footsteps steal about,
From whose deep sympathetic gloom
Day with its brightness is shut out;

Where hope hath folded up his wings
As if all life within wen- still'd;
Whose heavy air around thee clings
With perfume and with sickness fill'd ;

There lies a dying Christian, now
Drawing— scarce drawing— his last breath,
With glazing eye, and pallid brow
Damp in the evening dews of death.

Perhaps some memory of wrong,
Rising amid the' parting strife,
Is shaking with convulsions strong
The last sands in the glass of life.

Before his closing eye appears
In crowding visions, fell and fast,
Far off, within a depth of years
All irrecoverably past,

Some day of triumph and of gain,
When, strong in intellectual might,
Wrong wrested what it would obtain,
From the inferior strength of right ;

When he, whose name unstain'd and pure
His fathers to their sons convey'd,
He, who would any pain endure
Rather than leave on it a shade ;

He, who as juror often sat
To judge his fellows gone astray,
Pausing, and weighing this and that,
Then with calm voice had dared to say—

" Guilty," of him who, starving, stole
His dying children to maintain,
" Not Guilty" he whose meaner soul
Robb'd, undetected, with his brain.

With clearer, now, though closing eye
He sees what he had never seen
When life's gay equipage went by,
And all the world was fresh and green

One hour, within the shade of death
With God and conscience, teaches more
than life, with all its bloom and breath
Of busy years, had taught before.

O what a horror of despair !
Could he undo what he had done ?
The anguish of remorse is there.
The triumph and the gain are gone.

Lift up thy heart in fervent prayer,
And help him in his hour of need ;
Ask that his Saviour may be there
With him to speak, for him to plead ;

To hold His Cross before his eyes,
And bid him all his tremblings stay
On the accomplish'd Sacrifice,
Which took the whole world's sins away ;

To drop into his heart the grace
Which makes man feel he is forgiven ;
To show His reconciled face,
The only Sun of sunless heav'n ;

To speak the words which once He spake
To heal his hurt, repair his loss,
Who, when remorse his spirit brake,
Repentant look'd from Cross to Cross.

Lift up thy heart in prayer, and turn
Back from the sin whose deadly pow'r
To hurt thy soul thou wilt discern
Most clearly in thy dying hour.

And thank thy God for His dear aid,
That monitory sound He sent,
From sin's seductions to dissuade,
And be thy soul's encouragement;

That sound, as of the cock which crew
Of old, th' Apostle's heart to move,
And from his stricken soul forth drew
Tears— tears of penitence and love.

Listen ! it is the Passing Bell.
Lift up thy heart to God and pray.
A soul is passing,— who can tell
How prayer may help it on its way !

And help thee, too, in thy dread need,
Back to the path where thou shouldst be !
With thy whole heart for others plead—
Christ with His Father pleads for thee.