That his mother might ponder with grateful joy
O'er the last requests of her sailor boy.

We spoke--as the sound of the evening gun
Came onward from the shore;

But the boy still gazed on the west--like one
Who could hear that sound no more.
And death, like a sleep on his young heart fell,
'Mid the thoughts of the home he had loved so well.
A. B. P.

THE HOME FEVER.

[From the Manuscript of a Volume of Original Poems which will shortly be published.]

We sat in a green verandah's shade

Where the verdant 'tye tye' twined

Its fairy network around us, and made

A harp for the cool sea wind,

That came there with its low wild tones at night
Like a sigh that is telling of past delight.

And that wind, with its tale of flowers, had come

From the island groves away,

And the waves, like wanderers returning home,
To the beach came wearily,

And the conch's far homecall, the parrot's cry,
Had told that the sabbath of night was nigh.

We sat alone in the trelliced bower,
And gazed o'er the darkening deep,
And the holy calm of that twilight hour

Came over our hearts like sleep,

And we dreamt of the banks and bonny braes' That had gladdened our childhood's careless days.

And he—the friend at my side that sate,
Was a boy whose path had gone

'Mid the fields and the flowers of joy that Fate, Like a mother had smiled upon;

But alas! for the time when our hopes have wings, And when memory to grief, like a Syren sings.

His home had been on the stormy shore
Of Albyn's mountain land,

His ear was tuned to the breaker's roar,
And he loved the bleak sea sand,
And the torrent's din, and the howling breeze
Had all his soul's wild sympathies.

L

They had told him tales of the sunny lands
That rose over Indian seas,

Where gold shone glancing from river sands
And strange fruit bent the trees;

They had wiled him away from his father's hearth
With its light of peace and its voice of mirth.

Now, that fruit and the river gems were near,
And he strayed 'neath the tropic sun,

But the voice of promise that thrilled in his ear,
At that joyous time was gone;

And the hope he had chased, 'mid the wilds of night
Had melted away like a firefly's light.

Oh I have watched him gazing long

Where the homeward vessels lay, Cheating sad thoughts with some old song,

And wiping his tears away.

Oh well I knew that that
weary breast,
Like the dove of the deluge, pined for rest.

There was a 'worm i' the bud,' whose fold
Defied the leech's art,
Consumption's hectic plague-spot told
A tale of a broken heart.

The boy knew he was dying, but the sleep
Of death is bliss to those that watch and weep.'

"

He died—but memory's wizard power
With its ghostlike train had come

To the dark heart's ruins, at that last hour,
And he murmured 'home, home, home!'
And his spirit passed with its happy dream
Like a bird in the track of a bright sunbeam.

Oh talk of Spring to the trampled flower,
Of light to the fallen star,

Of glory to those that in danger's hour

Lay cold on the fields of war ;

But ye mock the exile's heart when ye tell
Of ought but the home where it pines to dwell!

HEART'S EASE.

A. B. P.

I used to love thee, simple flower,

To love thee dearly when a boy,

For thou did'st seem in childhood's hour,

The smiling type of childhood's joy.

But now thou only mock'st my grief,
By waking thoughts of pleasure fled;
Give me,-give me the withered leaf,
That falls in Autumn's bosom dead.

For that ne'er tells of what has been,
But warns me what I soon shall be;
It looks not back on pleasure's scene,
But points unto futurity.

I love thee not, thou simple flower,
For thou art gay, and I am lone,
Thy beauty died with childhood's hour,
The heart's ease from my path is gone.

WHAT IS TIME?

Anon.

I asked an aged man,- a man of cares,

Wrinkled, and curved, and white with hoary hairs; Time is the warp of life,' he said, 'Oh tell

The young, the fair, the gay, to weave it well.'
I asked the ancient venerable dead,—
Sages who wrote, and warriors who bled;