GONE BEFORE.

HERE'S a beautiful face in the silent air
Which follows me ever and near,
With its smiling eyes and amber hair,
With voiceless lips, yet with breath of pray'r,
That I feel, but I cannot hear.

The dimpled hand and ringlet of gold,

Lie low in a marble sleep;

I stretch my hand for a clasp of old;

But the empty air is strangely cold,
And my vigil alone I keep.

There's a sinless brow with a radiant crown,

And a cross laid down in the dust;

There's a smile where never a shade comes now,
And tears no more from those dear eyes flow,
So sweet in their innocent trust.

Ah, well! and summer is come again,
Singing her same old songs;

But oh! it sounds like a sob of pain
As it floats in sunshine and in rain,

O'er the hearts of the world's great throngs.

There's a beautiful region above the skies,
And I long to reach its shore,

For I know I shall find my treasure there,
The laughing eyes and the amber hair
Of the loved one gone before.

A FAREWELL.

C. KINGSLEY.

My fairest child, I have no song to give you, No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey, Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for ever One grand, sweet song.

SERENADE.

EDWARD COATE PINKNEY.

L

OOK out upon the stars, my love,
And shame them with thine eyes,
On which, than on the lights above,
There hang more destinies.
Night's beauty is the harmony
Of blending shades and light;

Then, lady, up,-look out, and be
A sister to the night!-

Sleep not! thine image wakes for aye

Within my watching breast:

Sleep not!--from her soft sleep should fly,

Who robs all hearts of rest.

Nay, lady, from thy slumbers break,

And make this darkness gay

With looks, whose brightness well might make
Of darker nights a day.

WYOMING.

F. G. HALLECK.

HOU com 'st in beauty, on my gaze at last,
"On Susquehannah's side, fair Wyoming!"
Image of many a dream, in hours long past,
When life was in its bud and blossoming,
And waters, gushing from the fountain spring
Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young

eyes,

As by the poet borne, on unseen wing,

I breathed, in fancy, 'neath thy cloudless skies, The Summer's air, and heard her echoed harmonies.

I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,

In life, a vision of the brain no more.

I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,
That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er;

And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;

And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore

The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade, Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.

Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power

Even of Campbell's pen hath pictured: he

Had woven, had he gazed one sunny hour
Upon thy smiling vale, its scenery

With more of truth, and made each rock and tree
Known like old friends, and greeted from afar:
And there are tales of sad reality,

In the dark legends of thy border war,

With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude's are.

But where are they, the beings of the mind,

The bard's creations, molded not of clay,
Hearts to strange bliss and suffering assigned-
Young Gertrude, Albert, Waldegrave—where are they?
We need not ask. The people of to-day
Appear good, honest, quiet men enough,
And hospitable too-for ready pay,--

With manners, like their roads, a little rough,

And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, tho' tough

Judge Hallenbach, who keeps the toll-bridge gate,

And the town records, is the Albert now

Of Wyoming; like him, in church and state,
Her Doric column; and upon his brow

The thin hairs, white with seventy winters' snow,
Look patriarchal. Waldegrave 'twere in vain
To point out here, unless in yon scare-crow,
That stands full-uniformed upon the plain,

To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain.

For he would look particularly droll

In his "Iberian boot" and "Spanish plume,'
And be the wonder of each Christian soul,
As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom.
But Gertrude, in her loveliness and bloom,
Hath many a model here, for woman's eye,