THE VOICE OF DEPARTED FRIENDSHIP.
I HAD a friend who died in early youth!
-And often, in those melancholy dreams,
When my soul travels through the umbrage deep
That shades the silent world of memory,
Methinks I hear his voice! sweet as the breath
Of balmy ground-flowers stealing from some spot
Of sunshine sacred, in a gloomy wood,
To everlasting spring.
In the church-yard
Where now he sleeps-the day before he died,
Silent we sat together on a grave;
Till gently laying his pale hand on mine,
Pale in the moonlight that was coldly sleeping
VOL. I.
*
A
On heaving sod and marble monument,
This was the music of his last farewell!
'Weep not, my brother! though thou seest me led, By short and easy stages, day by day, With motion almost imperceptible,
Into the quiet grave: God's will be done.
Even when a boy, in doleful solitude
My soul oft sat within the shadow of death!
And when I looked along the laughing earth,
Up the blue heavens, and through the middle air,
Joyfully ringing with the sky-lark's song,
I wept ! and thought how sad for one so young
To bid farewell to so much happiness.
But Christ hath called me from this lower world,
Delightful though it be and when I gaze
On the green earth, and all its happy hills,
"Tis with the feelings that a man beholds
A little farm which he is doomed to leave
On an appointed day. Still more and more
He loves it, as that mournful day draws near;
But hath prepared his heart-and is resigned!'
Then lifting up his radiant eyes to heaven,
He said, with fervent voice- O what were life,
Even in the warm and summer light of joy,
Without those hopes, that like refreshing gales,
At evening from the sea, come o'er the soul
Breathed from the ocean of eternity!
-And oh! without them, who could bear the storms
That fall in roaring blackness o'er the waters
Of agitated life: then hopes arise
All round our sinking souls, like those fair birds
O'er whose soft plumes the tempest hath no power,
Waving their snow-white wings amid the darkness,
And wiling us, with gentle motion, on
To some calm island! on whose silvery strand
Dropping at once, they fold their silent pinions,—
And, as we touch the shores of paradise,
In love and beauty walk around our feet!'
Professor Wilson.
What were the world without this holy book,-
A dreary waste of misery and pain;
Where helpless man, for bliss in vain might look,
But sunk in hell's abyss should still remain.
W. C. R.
Written on hearing of the Death of H. N. DALLAS, Esq. on board of the Lady Melville, East Indiaman, in Sangor Bay.
At evening when the sun went down,
And the wooded shores grew dark,
And the stars were mustering one by one
In the heavens, and the anchored bark
Lay like an Albatross asleep
In the cloudless wilds of the twilight deep;
While yet the gleam of the shrinking day
Through our cabin lattice shone,
We gathered the curtain's folds away
To gaze on the dying one.
And the faint light fell on his faded brow
With a smile that I love to remember now.
The landward breezes had cooled the air,
And he lifted his languid head,
And wistfully gazed through the lattice, where
That light on the sea was shed;
It seemed, as he thought, that the sun had gone
To beam on that land he had called his own.
Oh! recollection was busy then
In his young and faithful heart,
As it sadly brooded on moments, when
He turned from his home to part.
His home-and the voices he loved to hear;
And his father's smile and his mother's tear.
And a troubled joy seemed yet to flow
From the thought of his youth's glad hours; And a smile passed over his wasted brow
Like the sun o'er withered flowers.
And his burning hands o'er his eyelids passed, To crush the tears that had sprung at last.
With feeble aim he raised his hand,
And pointed towards the west,
Where the blue hills of his native land,
And the objects loved the best,
Seemed still to rise on memory,
And feed the light of his dying eye.
That mute request too well we knew,
And our plighted words we passed,
That his loved of home should learn how true
His heart was till the last,
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