GONE BEFORE. HERE'S a beautiful face in the silent air 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, 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, Ah, well! and summer is come again, But oh! it sounds like a sob of pain O'er the hearts of the world's great throngs. There's a beautiful region above the skies, For I know I shall find my treasure there, 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, Then, lady, up,-look out, and be 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 WYOMING. F. G. HALLECK. HOU com 'st in beauty, on my gaze at last, 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, And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore, 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 With more of truth, and made each rock and tree 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, 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, The thin hairs, white with seventy winters' snow, To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain. For he would look particularly droll In his "Iberian boot" and "Spanish plume,' |