A bruiséd reed he will not break; He wounds them for his mercy's sake; Humbled beneath his mighty hand, Now, traveller in the vale of tears Through Time's dark wilderness of years, There is a calm for those who weep, The soul, of origin divine, God's glorious image freed from clay, The sun is but a spark of fire, Shall never die!" MONTGOMERY. THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD. U HEY grew in beauty, side by side, They filled one home with glee ;Their graves are severed far and wide, By mount, and stream, and sea. The same fond mother bent at night O'er each fair sleeping brow; One, 'midst the forests of the west, The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one; One sleeps where southern vines are dressed Above the noble slain; He wrapt his colours round his breast, On a blood-red field of Spain. And one-o'er her the myrtle showers And parted thus they rest, who played They that with smiles lit up the hall, And cheered with song the hearth,— Alas! for love, if thou wert all, And nought beyond on earth! MRS. HEMANS. THE DEAD. HE dead are like the stars by day But not extinct, they hold their way In glory through the sky: Spirits from bondage thus set free, Vanish amidst immensity, Where human thought, like human sight, Fails to pursue their trackless flight. MONTGOMERY. I KNOW THOU HAST GONE. KNOW thou hast gone to the home of thy rest, I know thou hast gone where the weary are blest, And the mourner looks up and is glad! Where Love has put off, in the land of its birth, The stains it had gathered in this, And Hope, the sweet singer that gladdened the earth, I know thou hast gone where thy forehead is starred Where the light of thy loveliness cannot be marred, I know thou hast drunk of the Lethe that flows Through a land where they do not forget, That sheds over memory only repose, And takes from it only regret! In thy far away dwelling, wherever it be, And the love that made all things a music to me, In the hush of the night, in the waste of the sea, Or alone with the breeze on the hill, I have ever a presence that whispers of thee, Mine eye must be dark that so long has been dimmed, But my heart has revealings of thee and thy home, I never look up, with a vow to the sky, But a light like thy beauty is there, And I hear a low murmur, like thine, in reply, And though like a mourner that sits by a tomb I am wrapt in a mantle of care, Yet the grief of my bosom-oh! call it not gloom- By sorrow revealed as the stars are by night, And Hope, like the rainbow, a creature of light, T. K. HERVEY, EPITAPH ON AN INFANT. N life's wild ocean, sorrowful and pained, It reached the harbour ere it met the storm. ANON. EPITAPH ON AN INFANT. RE sin could blight, or sorrow fade, The opening bud to heaven conveyed, COLERIDGE. TIME. (OLL on, roll on, thy ceaseless tide, While on thy noiseless breast I glide Swiftly to yonder shore— Roll on, roll on. Though like a dream the years have fled, I launched my fragile bark, and sped, Life's unknown ills to brave Roll on, roll on. Though winds that rent my flowing sail Are lulled or gently blow, The clouds no more the rising gale Betoken driving low Roll on, roll on. I've seen the spring of mortal good, The summer, too, is past; The tide of life is at the flood; The ebb must come at last Roll on, roll on. Oh, then, my soul, unshackled, free, Its earthly voyage o'er, Shall sail upon a boundless sea Roll on, roll on. Eternity! transcendent bliss! Past man's sublimest thought; Light of the soul, through an abyss Of darkness dimly caught Roll on, roll on. |