VI.

DEATH: IMMORTALITY: HEAVEN.

THE PROSPECT.

METHINKS we do as fretful children do,
Leaning their faces on the window-pane

To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,

And shut the sky and landscape from their view; And, thus, alas! since God the maker drew

A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,The life beyond us and our souls in pain,— We miss the prospect which we are called unto By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong, O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath, And keep thy soul's large windows pure from

wrong;

That so, as life's appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along The sunset consummation-lights of death.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

THE LOST PLEIAD.

NoT in the sky,

Where it was seen,

Nor on the white tops of the glistening wave,

Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep,

347

Though green,

And beautiful, its caves of mystery;-
Shall the bright watcher have

A place, and as of old high station keep.

Gone, gone!

Oh, never more to cheer

The mariner who holds his course alone

On the Atlantic, through the weary night,

When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep,
Shall it appear,

With the sweet fixedness of certain light,
Down-shining on the shut eyes of the deep.

Vain, vain!

Hopeless most idly then, shall he look forth,
That mariner from his bark.

Howe'er the north

Does raise his certain lamp, when tempests

lower

He sees no more that perished light again!

And gloomier grows the hour

Which may not, through the thick and crowding

dark,

Restore that lost and loved one to her tower.

He looks, the shepherd of Chaldea's hills

Tending his flocks,

And wonders the rich beacon does not blaze,
Gladdening his gaze;-

And from his dreary watch along the rocks,
Guiding him safely home through perilous ways!
Still wondering as the drowsy silence fills

The sorrowful scene, and every hour distils
Its leaden dews.-How chafes he at the night,
Still slow to bring the expected and sweet light,
So natural to his sight!

And lone,

Where its first splendors shone,

Shall be that pleasant company of stars:

How should they know that death

Such perfect beauty mars?

And like the earth, its crimson bloom and breath;

Fallen from on high,

Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die!All their concerted springs of harmony

Snapped rudely, and the generous music gone.

A strain—a mellow strain—

A wailing sweetness filled the sky;

The stars, lamenting in unborrowed pain,
That one of their selectest ones must die!
Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest!
Alas! 't is evermore our destiny,

The hope, heart-cherished, is the soonest lost;
The flower first budden, soonest feels the frost:
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest?
And, like the pale star shooting down the sky,
Look they not ever brightest when they fly
The desolate home they blessed?

WILLIAM GILMORE

PASSING AWAY.

WAS it the chime of a tiny bell

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,

Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and

clear,

When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the

deep,

She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,

To catch the music that comes from the shore? Hark! the notes on my ear that play

Are set to words; as they float, they say, "Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear; Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell, Striking the hour, that filled my ear, As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime That told of the flow of the stream of time. For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing); And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow; And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought or care stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;
And the light in her eye, and the light on the
wheels,

That marched so calmly round above her,
Was a little dimmed,-as when evening steals
Upon noon's hot face. Yet one couldn't but

love her,

For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;
And she seemed, in the same silver tone, to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

While yet I looked, what a change there came! Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan;