To listen where her gentle voice
Its welcome music shed,
And find within his lonely halls
The silence of the dead;
To look, unconsciously, for her,
The chosen and the chief

Of earthly joys—and look in vain—
This is a Father's grief.

To stand beside the sufferer's couch,
While life is ebbing fast;

To mark that once illumined eye
With death's dull film o'ercast;-

To watch the struggles of the frame

When earth has no relief,

And hopes to heaven are breathed in vain

This is a Father's grief.

And not when that dread bour is past,

And life is pain no more

Not when the dreary tomb hath closed

O'er her so loved before,

Not then does kind oblivion come

To lend his woes relief,

But with him to the grave he bears
A Father's rooted grief.

For, Oh! to dry a mother's tears,
Another babe may bloom:

But what remains on earth for him
Whose last is in the tomb?

To think his child is blest above-
To hope their parting brief,-
These, these may soothe-but death alone
Can heal a Father's grief.

THE DEATH BELL.

[ANONYMOUS.]

TOLL On, toll on !

A son of man is passing to his rest,

A wayward child hath sought its parent breast: Toll on, toll on !

Bear on the dead:

On the dark bier the home-come wanderer lies;
Dimm'd is the lustre of those rayless eyes,
Their light is fled.

On, slowly on:

The varying dreams of love, of pride, of power; The aspiring hopes of many a lofty hour,

With him are gone.

Tread soft and light:

That palsied heart no more with life is warm, The quick'ning essence from that silent form Hath wing'd its flight!

Look on him now:

The cold, still torpor of the ice-bound wave,
The chilling signet of the opening grave,
Is on that brow.

But on, toll on

A struggling spirit is at length unbound-
A wearied pilgrim hath a resting found:
Toll on, toll on !

Voice of the tomb!

A thousand hearts thy awful notes have stirr'd,
A thousand years thy deep-toned summons heard
Sound forth the doom,

"Man, thou must die!"

So, prophet-like, would seem the fearful knell
To the chill'd heart th' unerring fate to tell,
66 All, all must die!"

Stern tolls thy chime;

The funeral herald of the warrior brave,
Whom glory's halo lighteth to the grave
In life's full prime.

WHERE IS MY GRAVE?

[CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE.]

WHERE is my grave? Mid the silent dead

Of the churchyard throng shall I lay my

Shall I sleep in peace, amid those who erst,
In happier years, my childhood nurst—
With them beneath the same green sod,
My soul with theirs gone to meet its God?

head?

Where is my grave? In the vasty deep,
'Mid the treasures of ocean's caves, shall I sleep?
With those who slept there ages before,

Far from their loved and their native shore ;
The sand my bed, and the rocks my pillow,

And cradled to rest by the tossing billow?

Where is my grave? Are its dark folds spread
On the field of the bloody, the dying, and dead;
Where fiercely the rush of the war-steed pass'd,
Where freedom hath fought and hath breathed her last,
And the foe and the friend one common bed share,-
Shall my place of repose be there, be there?

Where is my grave? 'Neath some foreign sky
Shall I lay down my wearied limbs and die?
Far over mountain, and far over wave,
Shall the wild-flowers bloom on my lonely grave,
In the land of the stranger, where none are near
To breathe the soft sigh, and to shed the sad tear?

Where is my grave? In the burning sand
Of Afric's bright and sultry land

Shall I sleep, when my toil and my labour are o'er,
A weary shepherd on that far shore;

With no record to tell, save the cross by my side, Of what faith I had preach'd, in what hope I had died ?

Where is my grave? It matters not where!
But my home beyond,—is it there, is it there,
Where cherubims spread their golden wings,
And where seraph to seraph triumphant sings:
In the sun-bright regions of the blest,
Shall there be my home, my eternal rest?

A

WRITTEN IN A GRAVE-YARD.

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]

SWEET and soothing influence breathes around The dwellings of the dead. Here on this spot, Where countless generations sleep forgot, Up from the marble tomb and grassy mound There cometh on my ear a peaceful sound, That bids me be contented with my lot, And suffer calmly. Oh! when passions hot, When rage or envy doth my bosom wound; Or wild designs--a fair deceiving trainWreathed in their flowery fetters me enslave; Or keen misfortune's arrowy tempests roll Full on my naked head.-Oh! then again May those still, peaceful accents of the grave, Arise, like slumbering music on my soul.

THE CHURCHYARD.

[WORDSWORTH.]

HIS file of Infants; some that never breathed,

THE

And the besprinkled Nursling, unrequired

Till he begins to smile upon the breast
That feeds him; and the tottering Little-one
Taken from air and sunshine when the rose
Of Infancy first blooms upon his cheek,