God looks from heaven ! and lo ! the waves are stilled ;
Help comes from him whose breath the winds did waken ;
Now, in the longed-for dawn we may behold
How God proteeteth and what God hath taken.
From "The Flood," 1825.
With what emotions did they, who had just escaped
death, look upon the scene of their former domestic life,
happy, though attended with so many privations ! Who
shall judge them severely if their first upward glance
was not one of gratitude ? Life could scarcely appear a
welcome gift, since they were now deprived of every
thing necessary to its support and enjoyment. The very
earth on which the walls of their dwelling had rested
was swept away — a dwelling which had contained all
the necessaries of life, and in which the devoted hus-
band and wife had fouud so much happiness. The
church was gone, and its loss was a most severe wound
to the heart of the pastor ; of his second sanctuary,
too, the quiet abode of his domestic happiness, there
remained but a few fragments, scarcely enough to mark
the place where it had stood. The unhappy couple
gazed at the desolation with tearful eyes. The husband
recollected his books; not one of them had escaped ;
