Over the river, the mystic river,

My childhood's idol is waiting for me.

For none return from those quiet shores,

Who cross with the boatman cold and pale; We hear the dip of the golden oars,

And catch a gleam of the snowy sail; And lo! they have passed from our yearning hearts, They cross the stream and are gone for aye. We may not sunder the veil apart

That hides from our vision the gates of day; We only know that their barks no more

May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea;
Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore,
They watch, and beckon, and wait for me.

And I sit and think, when the sunset's gold
Is flushing river and hill and shore,

I shall one day stand by the water cold,

And list for the sound of the boatman's oar;
I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail,
I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand,
I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale,
To the better shore of the spirit land.

I shall know the loved who have gone before,
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
The angel of death shall carry me.

NANCY AMELIA WOODBURY PRIEST.

But the wide arms of mercy are spread to enfold thee,

And sinners may hope, since the Sinless has died.

Thou art gone to the grave, — and, its mansion forsaking,

Perhaps thy tried spirit in doubt lingered long,

But the sunshine of heaven beamed bright on thy waking,

THE PLEASURES OF HEAVEN. THERE all the happy souls that ever were, Shall meet with gladness in one theatre; And each shall know there one another's face, By beatific virtue of the place. There shall the brother with the sister walk, And sons and daughters with their parents talk; But all of God: they still shall have to say, But make him all in all their theme that day: That happy day that never shall see night! Where he will be all beauty to the sight; Wine or delicious fruits unto the taste; A music in the ears will ever last; Unto the scent, a spicery or balm ; And to the touch, a flower, like soft as palm. He will all glory, all perfection, be, God in the Union and the Trinity! That holy, great, and glorious mystery Will there revealéd be in majesty, By light and comfort of spiritual grace; The vision of our Saviour face to face, In his humanity! to hear him preach The price of our redemption, and to teach, Through his inherent righteousness in death, The safety of our souls and forfeit breath! What fulness of beatitude is here! What love with mercy mixéd doth appear! To style us friends, who were by nature foes! Adopt us heirs by grace, who were of those Had lost ourselves; and prodigally spent Our native portions and possessed rent! Yet have all debts forgiven us; an advance By imputed right to an inheritance In his eternal kingdom, where we sit Equal with angels, and co-heirs of it.

BEN JONSON.

seraphim's song.

BEYOND THE

WM. A. MUHLENBERG.

SMILING AND THE
WEEPING.

BEYOND the smiling and the weeping
I shall be soon;

Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping,
I shall be soon.

Love, rest, and home!
Sweet hope!

Lord, tarry not, but come.

Beyond the blooming and the fading
I shall be soon;

Beyond the shining and the shading,
Beyond the hoping and the dreading,
I shall be soon.

Love, rest, and home!

Beyond the rising and the setting
I shall be soon;

Beyond the calming and the fretting,
Beyond remembering and forgetting,
I shall be soon.
Love, rest, and home!

Beyond the gathering and the strowing
I shall be soon;
Beyond the ebbing and the flowing,
Beyond the coming and the going,
I shall be soon.

Love, rest, and home!

Beyond the parting and the meeting
I shall be soon;

Beyond the farewell and the greeting,
Beyond this pulse's fever beating,
I shall be soon.

Love, rest, and home!

Beyond the frost chain and the fever
I shall be soon;

Beyond the rock waste and the river,
Beyond the ever and the never,
I shall be soon.

Love, rest, and home!

Sweet hope!

Lord, tarry not, but come.

HORATIUS BONAR.

THE LAND O' THE LEAL.

I'm wearing awa', Jean,

Like snaw when its thaw, Jean,
I'm wearing awa'

To the land o' the leal.
There's nae sorrow there, Jean,
There's neither cauld nor care, Jean,
The day is aye fair

In the land o' the leal.

Ye were aye leal and true, Jean; Your task 's ended noo, Jean, And I'll welcome you

To the land o' the leal. Our bonnie bairn 's there, Jean, She was baith guid and fair, Jean, O, we grudged her right sair To the land o' the leal!

Then dry that tearfu' e'e, Jean, My soul langs to be free, Jean, And angels wait on me

To the land o' the leal! Now fare ye weel, my ain Jean, This warld's care is vain, Jean; We'll meet and aye be fain In the land o' the leal.

LADY NAIRN.

UNDER THE VIOLETS.

HER hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go ;
Her eyes are shut to life and light ;-
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,

To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb

Shall wheel their circling shadows round,
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,

The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of spring,

That triils beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry. When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass. At last the rootlets of the trees

Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize

In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise !

If any, born of kindlier blood,

Should ask, What maiden lies below? Say only this: A tender bud,

That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

SELECTIONS FROM "IN MEMORIAM."

GRIEF UNSPEAKABLE.

I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel:
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

DEAD, IN A FOREIGN LAND.
FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favorable speed
Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead
Through prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above;

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love;

My Arthur, whom I shall not see Till all my widowed race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.

THE PEACE OF SORROW.

CALM is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

And only through the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold

And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,

And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

TIME AND ETERNITY.

IF Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom
Through all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,

Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the color of the flower:

So then were nothing lost to man; "So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began ;

And love will last as pure and whole

As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul.

PERSONAL RESURRECTION.

THAT each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul,

Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
And I shall know him when we meet :
And we shall sit at endless feast,

Enjoying each the other's good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth? He seeks at least

Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,

Some landing-place to clasp and say, "Farewell! We lose ourselves in light."

SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP.

Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,

I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame,
And I be lessened in his love?

I wrong the grave with fears untrue:

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death: The dead shall look me through and through.

Be near us when we climb or fall:

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.

MOONLIGHT MUSINGS.

WHEN on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest,
By that broad water of the west,
There comes a glory on the walls;
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o'er the number of thy years.

The mystic glory swims away;

From off my bed the moonlight dies:
And, closing eaves of wearied eyes,
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray :

And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church, like a ghost,
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.

DEATH IN LIFE'S PRIME.

So many worlds, so much to do,

So little done, such things to be, How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true?

The fame is quenched that I foresaw,
The head hath missed an earthly wreath :
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law.

We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,

Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-enfolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.

THE POET'S TRIBUTE.

WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme
To him who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
Foreshortened in the tract of time?

These mortal lullabies of pain

May bind a book, may line a box, May serve to curl a maiden's locks: Or when a thousand moons shall wane

A man upon a stall may find,

And, passing, turn the page that tells A grief, then changed to something else, Sung by a long-forgotten mind.

But what of that? My darkened ways Shall ring with music all the same; To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THEY ARE ALL GONE.

THEY are all gone into the world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here!
Their very memory is fair and bright,

And my sad thoughts doth clear;

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,

Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun's remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days,

My days which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmering and decays.

O holy hope and high humility, -
High as the heavens above!

These are your walks, and you have showed them

me

To kindle my cold love.