The winter's harbinger had still'd That soul of song which cheer'd the scene. With visage pale, and tottering gait, He came to breathe his last farewell. "Thou grove! how dark thy gloom to me! In every falling leaf I see A threatening messenger of death. "O Esculapius!* in my ear Thy melancholy warnings chime :- 666 'Thy spring will winter's gloom o'ershade, Ere yet the fields are white with snow; Ere yet the latest flowerets fade, Thou, in thy grave, wilt sleep below.' "I hear the hollow murmuring— The cold wind rolling o'er the plain- How swift! how sorrowful! how vain! O wave, ye dancing boughs, O wave! Then consecrate my memory. *In the Greek mythology, the cock was one of the animals consecrated to Esculapius, the god of medicine. "I see, with loose, dishevelled hair, Covering her snowy bosom, come The angel of my childhood there, And dew, with tears, my early tomb. "Then in the autumn's silent eve, Then he was silent;-faint and slow Beneath the aged oaks he sleeps :-- The woodman, to his cottage bound, RELIGION. THROUGH shades and solitudes profound The fainting traveller wends his way; Bewildering meteors glare around, And tempt his wandering feet astray. Welcome, thrice welcome to his eye Thus mortals blind and weak below wo, And life's a pilgrimage of pain! Till mild Religion from above Ambition, pride, revenge, depart, Beyond the narrow vale of time, At her approach, the grave appears Her voice the watching cherub hears, Baptized with her renewing fire, May we the crown of glory gain ; Rise when the hosts of heaven expire, And reign with God, forever reign. "HE SHALL FLY AWAY AS A DREAM." I DREAMED:-I saw a rosy child, With flaxen ringlets, in a garden playing; Now stooping here, and then afar off straying, 'T was changed: one summer's day I stepped aside, Once more: 't was evening, and the cheerful fire The heavens were clouded-and I heard the tone THE HARP OF JUDAH. SWEET harp of Judah! shall thy sound That rung through Judah's sainted reign? No-for to higher worlds belong The wonders of thy sacred song; Thy prophet-bards might sweep thy chords, Thy lay, descending from above, Full fraught with justice, truth, and love; Kind was its tone-its warning plain; Then fell at length his vengeful stroke; Final and unretrieved her fall: The heathen ploughshare razed her wall, Rome's slaughtering eagle clapp'd her wings. Yet, harp of Judah! rung thy strain, And woke thy glories not in vain ; Yet, though in dust thy frame be hurl'd, Though faintly swell thy notes sublime, Through worlds remote-the old—the new; : |