A Death Scene.

PHOEBE CAREY.

DYING, still slowly dying,

As the hours of night rode by, She had lain since the light of sunset Was red on the evening sky:

Till after the middle watches,

As we softly near her trod,

When her soul from its prison fetters
Was loosed by the hand of God.

One moment her pale lips trembled
With the triumph she might not tell,
As the sight of the life immortal
On her spirit's vision fell;
Then the look of rapture faded,
And the beautiful smile was faint,
As that, in some convent picture,
On the face of a dying saint.

And we felt in the lonesome midnight,

As we sat by the silent dead,

What a light on the path going downward
The feet of the righteous shed.

Then we thought how, with faith unshrinking,

She came to the Jordan's tide,

And, taking the hand of the Saviour,

Went up on the heavenly side.

Spring.

Spring.

A. DE VERE.

ΟΝ

NCE more, through God's high will and grace,
Of hours that each its task fulfils,

Heart-healing Spring resumes its place
The valley through, and scales the hills.

Who knows not Spring? who doubts when blows
Her breath, that Spring is come indeed?

The swallow doubts not; nor the rose
That stirs, but wakes not; nor the weed.

Once more the cuckoo's call I hear;

I know, in many a glen profound, The earliest violets of the year

Rise up like water from the ground.

The thorn, I know, once more is white;
And far down many a forest dale,

The anemones in dubious light

Are trembling like a bridal veil.

By streams released that surging flow
From craggy shelf, through sylvan glades,

The pale narcissus, well I know,

Smiles hour by hour on greener shades.

The honey'd cowslip tufts once more
The golden slopes ;—with gradual ray
The primrose stars the rock, and o'er

The wood-path strews its milky way.

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I see her not-I feel her near,

As charioted in mildest airs
She sails through yon empyreal sphere,
And in her arms and bosom bears

That urn of flowers, and lustral dews,
Whose sacred balm, on all things shed,
Revives the weak, the old renews,

And crowns with votive wreaths the dead.

Youth and Age.

EDMUND WALLER.

'HE seas are quiet when the winds are o'er,

TH

So calm are we when passions are no more!
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.

Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal'd that emptiness which age descries;
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.

Stronger by weakness wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home;

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

The Builders.

Beautiful Cloud.

J. E. CARPENTER.—Music by J. H. Thomas.

BEAUTIFUL cloud in purest ether sleeping,

Why should we sigh for a cloudless summer day?
But for the tears of heaven that thou art weeping,
Should we have flowers to beautify our way?
Earth far beneath, the fadeless blue above thee,
Throned 'mid the stars, still lowly was thy birth

Not for thy beauty only do I love thee,

Giver of blessings to the grateful earth.

Beautiful cloud, all lovely shapes assuming,

In thy embrace the white-wing'd angels sleep;
Why else the silvery light thy form illuming?
Sure there their watch our guardian angels keep.
Thine is the land from mortal vision shrouded,
Thou, lovely dream, the cloud-wall of the skies,
Hidest alone the million spirits crowded

;

Round the bright throne thou shrin'st from human eyes.

The Builders.

W. H. LONGFELLOW.

ALL are architects of Fate,

Working in these walls of time;

Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low,

Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show,

Strengthens and supports the rest.

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For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials fill'd;
Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these ;

Leave no yawning gaps between ; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of art,

Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part,

For the gods are everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen ; Make the house where gods may dwell Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of time;
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base,

And ascending and secure,

Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain,

And one boundless reach of sky.