Lo! where he cometh! the Messiah comes !
The King! the Comforter! the Christ!—He comes
So burst the bonds of death, and overturn
The power of Time.-Hark! the trumpet's blast
Rings o'er the heavens! They rise the myriads
rise-

Even from their graves they spring, and burst the chains

Of torpor-He has ransom'd them, * * *

Forgotten generations live again,

Assume the bodily shapes they own'd of old, Beyond the flood;-the righteous of their times. Embrace and weep, they weep the tears of joy. The sainted mother wakes, and in her lap

Clasps her dear babe, the partner of her grave,
And heritor with her of Heaven, a flower
Wash'd by the blood of Jesus from the stain
Of native guilt, even in its early bud,

And, hark! those strains, how solemnly serene
They fall, as from the skies-at distance fall—
Again more loud—The hallelujah's swell;
The newly-risen catch the joyful sound;

They glow, they burn; and now with one accord
Bursts forth sublime from every mouth the song
Of praise to God on high, and to the Lamb
Who bled for mortals.

Yet there is peace for man.-Yea, there is peace Even in this noisy, this unsettled scene;

When from the crowd, and from the city far,
Haply he may be set (in his late walk

O'ertaken with deep thought) beneath the boughs
Of honeysuckle when the sun is gone,
And with fix'd eye, and wistful, he surveys
The solemn shadows of the Heavens sail,

And thinks the season yet shall come, when Time
Will waft him to repose, to deep repose,
Far from the unquietness of life-from noise
And tumult far-beyond the flying clouds,
Beyond the stars, and all this passing scene,
Where change shall cease, and Time shall be no

more.

MELANCHOLY HOURS.

(No. I.)

There is a mood

(I sing not to the vacant and the young)
There is a kindly mood of Melancholy,

That wings the soul and points her to the skies.

Dyer.

PHILOSOPHERS have divested themselves of their natural apathy, and poets have risen above themselves, in descanting on the pleasures of Melancholy. There is no mind so gross, no understanding so uncultivated, as to be incapable, at certain moments, and amid certain combinations, of feeling that sublime influence upon the spirits which steals the soul from the petty anxieties of the world,

"And fits it to hold converse with the gods."

I must confess, if such there be who never felt the divine abstraction, I envy them not their insensibility. For my own part, it is from the indulgence of this soothing power that I derive the most exquisite of gratifications; at the calm hour of moonlight, amid all the sublime

serenity, the dead stillness of the night; or when the howling storm rages in the heavens, the rain pelts on my roof, and the winds whistle through the crannies of my apartment, I feel the divine mood of melancholy upon me; I imagine myself placed upon an eminence, above the crowds who pant below in the dusty tracks of wealth and honor. The black catalogue of crimes and of vice; the sad tissue of wretchedness and wo, passes in review before me, and I look down upon man with an eye of pity and commiseration. Though the scenes which I survey be mournful, and the ideas they excite equally sombre; though the tears gush as I contemplate them, and my heart feels heavy with the sorrowful emotions which they inspire; yet are they not unaccompanied with sensations of the purest and most ecstatic bliss.

It is to the spectator alone that Melancholy is forbidding; in herself she is soft and interesting, and capable of affording pure and unalloyed delight. Ask the lover why he muses by the side of the purling brook, or plunges into the deep gloom of the forest? Ask the unfortunate why he seeks the still shades of solitude? or the man who feels the pangs of disappointed ambition, why he retires into the silent walks of seclusion? and he will tell you that he derives a pleasure therefrom, which nothing else can impart. It is the delight of Melancholy; but the melancholy of these beings is as far removed from that of the philosopher, as are the narrow and contracted