And still the summer vines are thrown,
In annual wreaths, across her breast.
And still the sighing autumn grieves,
And strews the hallowed spot with leaves.
The Revellers.-OHIO BACKWOODSMAN.
THERE were sounds of mirth and joyousness
Broke forth in the lighted hall,
And there was many a merry laugh,
And many a merry call;
And the glass was freely passed around,
And the nectar freely quaffed;
And many a heart felt light with glee
And the joy of the thrilling draught.
A voice arose in that place of mirth,
And a glass was flourished high;
I drink to Life," said a son of earth,
"And I do not fear to die;
I have no fear-I have no fear-
Talk not of the vagrant Death;
For he is a grim old gentleman,
And he wars but with his breath.
Cheer, comrades, cheer! We drink to Life,
And we do not fear to die !"
Just then a rushing sound was heard,
As of spirits sweeping by;
And presently the latch flew up,
And the door flew open wide;
And a stranger strode within the hall,
With an air of martial pride.
He spoke: "I join in your revelry,
Bold sons of the Bacchan rite;
And I drink the toast you have drank before,
The pledge of yon dauntless knight.
Fill high-fill high-we drink to Life,
And we scorn the reaper Death;
For he is a grim old gentleman,
And he wars but with his breath.
He's a noble soul, that champion knight,
And he bears a martial brow;
O, he'll pass the gates of Paradise,
To the regions of bliss below!"
This was too much for the Bacchan;
Fire flashed from his angry eye;
A muttered curse, and a vengeful oath-
"Intruder, thou shalt die !"
He struck-and the stranger's guise fell off,
And a phantom form stood there-
A grinning, and ghastly, and horrible thing,
With rotten and mildewed hair!
And they struggled awhile, till the stranger blew
A blast of his withering breath;
And the Bacchanal fell at the phantom's feet,
And his conqueror was-Death.
"I would not live always.”—B. B. THATCHER.
EARTH is the spirit's rayless cell;
But then, as a bird soars home to the shade
Of the beautiful wood, where its nest was made,
In bonds no more to dwell;-
Be spread for the skies, when its toil is done,
And its breath flow free, as a bird's in the sun,
And the soft, fresh gales of spring.
O, not more sweet the tears
Of the dewy eve on the violet shed,
Than the dews of age on the "hoary head,"
When it enters the eve of years.
Nor dearer, mid the foam
Of the far-off sea, and its stormy roar,
Is a breath of balm from the unseen shore,
To him that weeps for home.
Wings, like a dove, to fly!
The spirit is faint with its feverish strife;0, for its home in the upper Life!
When, when will Death draw nigh!
The Disimbodied Spirit.-PEABODY.
O SACRED star of evening, tell
In what unseen, celestial sphere,
Those spirits of the perfect dwell,
Too pure to rest in sadness here.
Roam they the crystal fields of light,
O'er paths by holy angels trod,
Their robes with heavenly lustre bright,
Their home, the Paradise of God?
Soul of the just! and canst thou soar
Amidst those radiant spheres sublime,
Where countless hosts of heaven adore,
Beyond the bounds of space or time ?-
And canst thou join the sacred choir,
Through heaven's high dome the song to raise,
Where seraphs strike the golden lyre
In everduring notes of praise?
Oh! who would heed the chilling blast,
That blows o'er time's eventful sea,
If bid to hail, its perils past,
The bright wave of eternity!
And who the sorrows would not bear
Of such a transient world as this,
When hope displays, beyond its care,
So bright an entrance into bliss!
Lines on hearing of the Death of Garafilia Mohalbi.MRS. SIGOURNEY.
SWEET bird of Ipsera! that fled
From tyrants o'er the tossing sea,
And on the winds of freedom shed
Thy wildly classic melody,-
Love at thy tender warbling woke,
A foreign land was home to thee,
And stranger voices fondly spoke
The welcome of paternity.
Why was thy tarrying here so brief,
Thou sheltered in affection's breast?
Here were no woes to wake thy grief,
Nor dangers to corrode thy rest.
Ah! thou had'st heard of that blessed clime
Where everlasting glories beam :-
Perchance its groves and skies sublime
Had burst upon thy raptured dream.
Thy bright wing spread. Should aught detain
The prisoner in a cage of clay,
When, echoing from the heavenly plain,
Congenial tones forbid delay?
No: where no archer's shaft can fly,
No winter check the tuneful sphere,
Rise, wanderer, to thy native sky,
And warble in a Savior's ear.
Crossing the Ford.-O. W. H.
CLOUDS, forests, hills, and waters !—and they sleep
As if a spirit pressed their pulses down,
From the calm bosom of the waveless deep
Up to the mountain with its sunlit crown,
Still as the moss-grown cities of the dead,
Save the dull plashing of the horse's tread.
And who are they that stir the slumbering stream?
Nay, curious reader; I can only say
That, to my eyes of ignorance, they seem
Like honest rustics on the homeward way;
There is a village; doubtless thence they came;
There was a christening; and they have a name.
They are to us, like many a living form,
The image of a moment; and they pass
Like the last cloud that vanished on the storm,
Like the last shape upon the faithless glass;
By lake, or stream, by valley, field, or hill,
They must have lived; perchance are living still.
ymn of the Cherokee Indian.-I. MCLELLAN, Jun.
They waste us; ay, like April snow
In the warm noon, we shrink away;
And fast they follow, as we go,
Towards the setting day,
Till they shall fill the land, and we
Are driven into the western sea.
LIKE the shadows in the stream,
Like the evanescent gleam
Of the twilight's failing blaze,
Like the fleeting years and days,
Like all things that soon decay,
Pass the Indian tribes away.
Indian son, and Indian sire!
Lo! the embers of your fire,
On the wigwam hearth, burn low,
Never to revive its glow;
And the Indian's heart is ailing,
And the Indian's blood is failing.
Now the hunter's bow's unbent,
And his arrows all are spent!
Like a very little child
Is the red man of the wild;
To his day there'll dawn no morrow;
Therefore is he full of sorrow.
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