She still was young, and she had been fair;
But weather-stains, hunger, toil, and care,
That frost and fever that wear the heart,
Had made the colors of youth depart
From the sallow cheek, save over it came
The burning flush of the spirit's shame.

They were sailing o'er the salt sea-foam,
Far from her country, far from her home;
And all she had left for her friends to keep
Was a name to hide and a memory to weep!
And her future held forth but the felon's lot,
To live forsaken, to die forgot!

She could not weep, and she could not pray,
But she wasted and withered from day to day,
Till you might have counted each sunken vein,
When her wrist was prest by the iron chain;
And sometimes I thought her large dark eye
Had the glisten of red insanity.

She called me once to her sleeping-place,
A strange, wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight,
And she spoke in a low, unearthly tone,
The sound from mine ear hath never gone! -
"I had last night the loveliest dream :
My own land shone in the summer beam,
I saw the fields of the golden grain,

I heard the reaper's harvest strain ;

There stood on the hills the green pine-tree,
And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.
A long and a weary way I had come ;
But I stopped, methought, by mine own sweet home.
I stood by the hearth, and my father sat there,
With pale, thin face, and snow-white hair!
The Bible lay open upon his knee,
But he closed the book to welcome me.
He led me next where my mother lay,
And together we knelt by her grave to pray,
And heard a hymn it was heaven to hear,
For it echoed one to my young days dear.
This dream has waked feelings long, long since fled,
And hopes which I deemed in my heart were dead!
- We have not spoken, but still I have hung
On the Northern accents that dwell on thy tongue.
To me they are music, to me they recall
The things long hidden by Memory's pall!
Take this long curl of yellow hair,
And give it my father, and tell him my prayer,
My dying prayer, was for him."

;

te

No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
't is a consummation
That flesh is heir to,
to sleep ;-
Devoutly to be wished. To die,
To sleep! perchance to dream :- ay, there's the
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
rub;

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,

That undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE HUSBAND AND WIFE'S GRAVE. HUSBAND and wife! no converse now ye hold, As once ye did in your young days of love, On its alarms, its anxious hours, delays, Its silent meditations and glad hopes, Its fears, impatience, quiet sympathies ; Nor do ye speak of joy assured, and bliss Full, certain, and possessed. Domestic cares Call you not now together. Earnest talk On what your children may be moves you not. Ye lie in silence, and an awful silence; Not like to that in which ye rested once Most happy, silence eloquent, when heart With heart held speech, and your mysterious frames,

-

But, self-inspired, rise upward, searching out
The Eternal Mind, the Father of all thought,
Are they become mere tenants of a tomb?-
Dwellers in darkness, who the illuminate realms
Of uncreated light have visited and lived?—
Lived in the dreadful splendor of that throne
Which One, with gentle hand the veil of flesh
Lifting that hung 'twixt man and it, revealed
In glory? throne before which even now
Our souls, moved by prophetic power, bow down
Rejoicing, yet at their own natures awed?-
Souls that thee know by a mysterious sense,
Thou awful unseen Presence, are they quenched?
Or burn they on, hid from our mortal eyes
By that bright day which ends not, as the sun

-

And do our loves all perish with our frames?
Do those that took their root and put forth buds,
And then soft leaves unfolded in the warmth
Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty,
Then fade and fall, like fair, unconscious flowers?
Are thoughts and passions that to the tongue give
speech,

And make it set forth winning harmonies,
That to the cheek do give its living glow,
And vision in the eye the soul intense
With that for which there is no utterance, -
Are these the body's accidents, no more?
To live in it, and when that dies go out
Like the burnt taper's flame?

66

O listen, man!

A voice within us speaks the startling word,
Man, thou shalt never die !" celestial voices
Hymn it around our souls; according harps,
By angel fingers touched when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality;
Thick-clustering orbs, and this our fair domain,
The tall, dark mountains and the deep-toned seas,
Join in this solemn, universal song.

O listen, ye, our spirits! drink it in
From all the air! "T is in the gentle moonlight;
Is floating in day's setting glories; Night,
Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step
Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears;
Nightand the dawn, bright day and thoughtfuleve,
As one great mystic instrument, are touched
By an unseen, living Hand, and conscious chords
Quiver with joy in this great jubilee.

The dying hear it; and, as sounds of earth Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls To mingle in this heavenly harmony.

They shook it off, and laid aside earth's robes,
And put on those of light. They 're gone to dwell
In love, their God's and angels'? Mutual love,
That bound them here, no longer needs a speech
For full communion; nor sensations strong,
Within the breast, their prison, strive in vain
To be set free, and meet their kind in joy.
Changed to celestials, thoughts that rise in each
By natures new impart themselves, though silent.
Each quickening sense, each throb of holy love,
Affections sanctified, and the full glow
Of being, which expand and gladden one,
By union all mysterious, thrill and live
In both immortal frames ; sensation all,
And thought, pervading, mingling sense and
thought!

Ye paired, yet one! wrapt in a consciousness

Why call we, then, the square-built monument,
The upright column, and the low-laid slab
Tokens of death, memorials of decay?
Stand in this solemn, still assembly, man,
And learn thy proper nature; for thou seest
In these shaped stones and lettered tables figures
Of life. Then be they to thy soul as those
Which he who talked on Sinai's mount with God
Brought to the old Judeans; - types are these
Of thine eternity.

I thank thee, Father,
That at this simple grave on which the dawn
Is breaking, emblem of that day which hath
No close, thou kindly unto my dark mind
Hast sent a sacred light, and that away
From this green hillock, whither I had come
In sorrow, thou art leading me in joy.

RICHARD HENRY DANA.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering

heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built
shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care ;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour;

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted
vault,

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied

urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre;

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.