The grave grows green, the flowers bloom fair, No sorrowing tint of leaf or spray No pause or hush of merry birds Tells us how coldly sleeps below Where hast thou been this year, beloved? What hast thou seen? What visions fair, what glorious life, The veil! the veil!- —so thin, so strong, The mystic veil! when shall it fall, Not dead, not sleeping, not even gone; And waiting for the coming hour LORD of the living and the dead, Our Saviour dear, We lay in silence at Thy feet This sad, sad year! Anna Peyre Dinnies. TO MY HUSBAND'S FIRST GRAY HAIR. "I know thee not,-I loathe thy race; But in thy lineaments I trace What time shall strengthen, not efface.” Giaour. HOU strange, unbidden guest! from whence THO Thus early hast thou come? And wherefore? Rude intruder, hence! And seek some fitter home; These rich young locks are all too dear,— Indeed, thou must not linger here! Go-take thy sober aspect where The youthful cheek is fading, Or find some furrowed brow, which Care And add thy sad, malignant trace Thou wilt not go? Then answer me, And tell what brought thee here! Not one of all thy tribe I see Beside thyself appear, And through these bright and clustering curls Thou shinest, a tiny thread of pearls. Thou art a moralist? Ah, well! A few sage axioms just to tell? Old Truth has sent thee here to bear And now, as I observe thee nearer, She says thou art a herald, sent In kind and friendly warning, That thought, which to the dreamer preaches A lesson stern as true, That all things pass away, and teaches How youth must vanish too! And thou wert sent to rouse anew This thought, whene'er thou meet'st the view. And comes there not a whispering sound— Like echoes in their death ?— "Time onward sweeps, youth flies, prepare!" Such is thine errand, First Gray Hair. Rose Terry. THE FISHING-SONG. OWN in the wide gray river, Dow The current is sweeping strong; Over the wide gray river Floats the fisherman's song. The oar-stroke times the singing, Out of a deeper current The song brings back to me A cry from mortal silence Of mortal agony. Life that was spent and vanished, Hearts that are dead in living, Come back in the fisherman's song. I see the maples leafing, Just as they leafed before; The green grass comes no greener With the rude strain swelling, sinking, Yet the soul hath life diviner; Its past returns no more, But in echoes, that answer the minor And the ways of God are darkness; REVE DU MIDI. HEN o'er the mountain steeps WHE The hazy noontide creeps, And the shrill cricket sleeps Under the grass; When soft the shadows lie, And the idle winds go by, With the heavy scent of blossoms as they pass— Then, when the silent stream Lapses as in a dream, And the water-lilies gleam Up to the sun; When the hot and burdened day Rests on its downward way, When the moth forgets to play, And the plodding ant may dream her work is done— Then, from the noise of war And the din of earth afar, Like some forgotten star Dropped from the sky The sounds of love and fear, All voices sad and clear, |