Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by H. HOOKER, In the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Capacities of the Soul after Death, Natural Consciousness of a Life after Death, Diversity in Christian Death, from Difference in Belief, . Diversity in Christian Death, from Temperament and Disease, 251 TIRED with the sultry noonday toil, Where stately o'er my head, An oak's broad branches, with the sound Their fanning coolness spread, And, glistening through them, far on high, A child once more, I heard the bee, O'er all my senses stole; Till, stretched along the hillock's side, With one short moment's bursting strife, My spirit upward sprung ; But on the verge of either life Yet one short moment hung: Above the dead I seemed to bow, I seemed to touch the clay-cold brow, And still the murmuring branches stirred, And, soaring still, the forest bird Sent out its joyous cry. But these were like the scenes of night, And life, as if an inward fount, O'erflowed me and upbore, As on light plumes of love to mount, I was as one who on the main, Has caught and lost a landward strain, That came, and broke, and came again, Mid the hoarse billows' roar, But near as now his vessel floats, Sound matched with sound, the choral notes So all which e'er to joy or prayer Seemed in one glorious hymn to bear The solemn voice of woods and streams; And this fair chain of living things, A strain of glory, heard above; But oh, with what a bounding thrill The strength that knows not years! The way was passed; and I could stand, |