IX.

REMINISCENCE.

WHEN I reflect on what thou wert

A few, few years ago,

And when I think on what thou art,
Unbidden tears will flow.

We met in health, we met in youth,
We joined our hearts in love;
We joined our fate by vows of truth,
Which pain and sorrow prove.

Above our heads Time's winter-wing
Scarce waved, ere heart-wrung tears

Had dropped upon the flowers of Spring,
Like slow, consuming years.

But

years have not yet power to quench The early lights of youth;

Still less can Grief's dull waters drench Our hearts' untainted truth.

Awhile indeed thy days have been
O'ercast by clouds of sorrow;
But on the horizon Hope is seen,

Who gilds the dawning morrow.

Beloved, let not wasting Care
Feed on thy summer-leaf,

Nor sinking and foreboding Fear,

Nor canker-worm of Grief:

For though of happier thoughts thy God Thy bosom now bereaves—

Though he hath sent his chastening rod
Amid thy verdant leaves;

Spring will return-and vernal Health
Around thy stem will wreathe,
And Cheerfulness, as though by stealth,
Upon thy branches breathe.

Thy renovated pulse will beat,
Thy fears will be at rest,

And Happiness resume her seat
Within thy grateful breast.

Then, as I look on what thou art,
My thankful tears will flow;

For I shall think on what thou wert

A few, few years ago.

X.

LOVE.

DARK, dark indeed were this our earth,
With nought the soul of man to move,
If from the day-dawn of our birth,

We had not LOVE!

Our morning and our evening star,

Love lights our path, and sooths our rest; And all its fine emotions are

In Woman's breast.

She lulls with her soft voice to sleep
Our infancy, and can beguile
Sorrow, which makes man's heart to weep,
With her sweet smile.

As friend or sister, wife or mother,

Pure, fond, and faithful she doth prove; We doubt the heart of friend and brotherNot woman's love.

She is the rainbow of our life,

Whose bright beam shines, but not deceivesThe only heart, mid this world's strife, That man believes.

Thus sprang she from her Maker's Hand,
The helpmate of man's darksome day-
A light to cheer, but not command-
A heavenly ray.

Rather than lose her constant light,
And see it fade before my eye,
Swift fall, O God! the shades of night,
And let me die!

XI.

THE DREAM.

SLEEP hovered o'er me on his dusky wing,
And shaped to my distempered brain a dream,
Which haunts my waking fancy.-I had clomb,
How I know not, the summit of a church,
Whose western front as a cathedral showed,
Enwrought with Gothic and with Saxon arches,
Mid which an organ with its golden pipes
Gleamed in the setting sun, and sent forth tones
Rich, deep, sonorous,- —as the fabled lyre
Responding music to the solar ray.

Methought I would descend this perilous steep:
A giant hand with mighty palm did touch
The organ pipes; they sounded deep and clear
As loud reverberating thunder:-rocked
The total fabric of the church, as moves
A clock's vibrating pendulum. Towers, spires,
Gigantic columns, antique monkish forms,