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A PARTING SONG.

129

Are types of our mortality,

And of our fading years.

The tree that shades the plain,
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days,—
But not my joys again.

A PARTING SONG.

BY J. W. MILLER.

THIS autumn-close-this autumn-close-
With all its rich delights,
Its high and blue and silent days,

Its deep and holy nights;
My memory shall turn to them

From all its vagrant flights.

The painted fields, the burnished clouds,
The gold embroidered floods,
The autumn's glance on all the hills,
His mantle on the woods,

Shall be, through waning winter moons

To me as present goods.

I've stood upon thy hills, fair land,

When morning filled the sky,

And over gleaming sea and isle

130

A PARTING SONG.

The monarch sun rode high;

So thy proud beauty in my thought
Liveth, and may not die.

And I have bowed beneath the power
That ruled the parting day,

When harmonies of living hues

Were poured o'er hill and bay,
And stars shone out, and moons rose up
And yet their light will stay.

Their images will linger yet
To light my happy dreams,
As lovely forms that bend above,
The bosoms of calm streams,
And years that flow, like waves, away,
Still give their pleasant gleams.

This autumn-close-this autumn-close

How fondly I may shrine

Its social joys and heartfelt mirth,

To be a jewel-mine,

Within the caves of future years,

With fadeless wealth to shine.

So 'mid the wasting cares and toils,
Sad follies, and dark strife,

That sweep, like wint'ry storms, along

I

The crowded ways of life,

may pass on, and have no want;

With thoughtful pleasures rife.

HYMN AT MIDNIGHT.

And then, fair land, I may return
Back to thy kindred heart,

And clasp its love, and breathe its truth,
All cool for passion's smart ; •

And through all time, beneath all gloom,
This hope shall not depart.

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SOURCE of all life, and joy, and light!
Creator of each starry sphere,
That o'er me, on the arch of night,
Gleams like a diamond, bright and clear.
Oh, as I gaze, transported now,

Upon this blue, resplendent dome,
Deign but to hear my prayer, that Thou
Wilt call my erring spirit home:

Home from the world's fast fading bowers,
Frail visions and deluding dreams,
To that fair clime of Eden's flowers,
Sweet airs and softly gliding streams.
Oh, make me feel that while I stay,
A stranger and sojourner here,
My soul must seek its homeward way,
Far, far beyond each starry sphere!

131

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I kneel before thy gorgeous throne,
Upon thy footstool, King of kings!
And, gazing on the glories strewn
Beneath the Holy Spirit's wings,
Abject and weak my awe-struck heart
Would from thy dreadful presence flee,
If, Saviour, thou didst not impart
Rays of undying hope to me.-

As yonder faint and glimmering star
Receives its lustre from the sun,
Though from its fiery splendors far;
So from thy love, Almighty One,
My spirit drinks immortal light,
Oh, never may that light decay,
But, like yon diamond of the night
In heaven's own beauty melt away.

SONG,

BY EDWARD C. PINCKNEY.

WE break the glass, whose sacred wine
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,

Should e'er the hallowed toy profane;
And thus I broke a heart that poured
Its tide of feeling out for thee,
In draughts, by after-times deplored,
Yet dear to memory.

LINES.

But still the old impassioned ways
And habits of my mind remain,
And still unhappy light displays

Thine image chambered in my brain.
And still it looks as when the hours.......
Went by like flights of singing birds,
On that soft chain of spoken flowers,
And airy gems, thy words.

133

LINES,

BY J. G. PERCIVAL.

The memory of joys that are past.'-Ossian.

WHERE are now the flowers that once detained me Like a loiterer on my early way?

Where the fragrant wreaths that softly chained me, When young life was like an infant's play?

Were they but the fancied dreams, that hover
Round the couch where tender hearts repose?
Only pictured veils that brightly cover
With their skyey tints a world of woes?

They are gone-but Memory loves to cherish
All their sweetness in her deepest core.
Ah! the recollection cannot perish,

Though the eye may never meet them more.

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