ALL THINGS WILL DIE.

CLEARLY the blue river chimes in its flowing
Under my eye;

Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing
Over the sky.

One after another the white clouds are fleeting;

Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating
Full merrily;

Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.

All things must die.
Spring will come never more.

Oh! vanity!

Death waits at the door.

See! our friends are all forsaking

The wine and the merrymaking.

We are call'd-we must go.

Laid low, very low,

In the dark we must lie.

8

ALL THINGS WILL DIE.

The merry glees are still;

The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,

Nor the wind on the hill.
Oh! misery!

Hark! death is calling

While I speak to ye,

The jaw is falling,

The red cheek paling,

The strong limbs failing;

Ice with the warm blood mixing;

The eyeballs fixing.

Nine times goes the passing bell:

Ye merry souls, farewell.

The old earth

Had a birth,

As all men know,

Long ago.

And the old earth must die.

So let the warm winds range,

And the blue wave beat the shore;

For even and morn

Ye will never see

Thro' eternity.

All things were born.

Ye will come never more,

For all things must die.

LEONINE ELEGIACS.

LOW-FLOWING breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the gloaming:

Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.

Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of roseblowing bushes,

Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;

Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the owlet halloos; Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:

Over the pools in the burn water-gnats murmur and

mourn.

Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water out

floweth :

Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark

hyaline.

Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks;

but the Naiad

Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her

breast.

The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things

bringeth,

Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love,

Rosalind.

Thou comest morning or even; she cometh not morning or even.

False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosa

lind?

SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS

OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND.

O GOD! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow,
Wounding Thy soul.-That even now,
In this extremest misery

Of ignorance, I should require

A sign! and if a bolt of fire

Would rive the slumbrous summer noon

While I do pray to Thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!

Is not my human pride brought low?

The boastings of my spirit still?

The joy I had in my freewill

All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown? And what is left to me, but Thou,