CONSOLATION.

not taken! there are left

LL are
behind

Living beloveds, tender looks to

bring,

And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind.
But if it were not so if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring,
Where "dust to dust" the love from life

disjoined

And if before those sepulchres unmoving

I stood alone, (as some forsaken lamb Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth)

Crying "Where are ye, O my loved and

loving?"

Resignation.

81

RESIGNATION.

HERE is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and

vapors

Amid these earthly damps

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death!

What seems

so is

transition:

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead, the child of our affec

tion,

But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,

And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,

By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollu

tion,

She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air ;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken

The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild

In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.

THE FUTURE LIFE.

OW shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps

The disembodied spirits of the dead, When all of thee that time could wither sleeps,

And perishes among the dust we tread?

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain,

If there I meet thy gentle presence not; Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?

That heart whose fondest throbs to me

were given?

My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, And must thou never utter it in heaven?

In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind,

In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,