[Church Missionary House.

(The Missionary Register for April, 1824.)

Lines on New Zealand, by Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Esq., of Trinity College, Cambridge.

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The poet pays a just tribute in the following beautiful lines to that unwearied friend of New Zealand whose benevolent visits to its shores we have repeatedly recorded:—

But not thy death shall mar the gracious plan.
Nor check the task thy pious toil began;
O’er the wide waters of the bounding main
The Book of Life must win its way again,
And, in the regions by thy fate endeared.
The cross be lifted and the altar reared.
With furrowed brow and cheek serenely fair
The calm wind wandering o’er his silver hair,
His arm uplifted, and his moistened eye
Fixed in deep rapture on the golden sky—
Upon the shore, through many a billow driven,
He kneels at last, the Messenger of Heaven!
Long years, that rank the mighty with the weak,
Have dimmed the flush upon his faded cheek;
And many a dew, and many a noxious damp,
The daily labour, and the nightly lamp
Have reft away, for ever reft, from him
The liquid accent and the buoyant limb:
page 627 Yet still within him aspirations swell
Which time corrupts not, sorrow cannot quell;
The changeless zeal, which on, from land to land,
Speeds the faint foot, and nerves the withered hand,
And the mild Charity, which, day by day,
Weeps every wound and every stain away,
Rears the young bud on every blighted stem,
And longs to comfort where she must condemn.
With these, through storms and bitterness and wrath,
In peace and power he holds his onward path,
Curbs the fierce soul, and sheathes the murderous steel,
And calms the passions he hath ceased to feel,
Yes! he hath triumphed! while his lips relate
The sacred story of his Saviour’s fate,
While to the search of that tumultuous horde
He opens wide the Everlasting Word,
And bids the soul drink deep of wisdom there,
In fond devotion and in fervent prayer;
In speechless awe the wonder-stricken throng
Check their rude feasting and their barbarous song,
Around his steps the gathering myriads crowd,
The chief, the slave, the timid, and the proud,
Of various features, and of various dress,
Like their own forest-leaves, confused and numberless,

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