Oh, who could bear life's stormy doom,
Did not thy wing of love

Come brightly wafting through the gloom,
One Peace-Branch from above?

Then sorrow, touched by thee, grows bright
With more than rapture's ray,

As darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day.

On Seeing the Miniature of a Deceased Friend.

R. W. CUSHMAN.

It is mouldering to dust, in the grave dark and dreary, That form by the clod of the valley is press'd;

But 'tis sweet to the Christian, when bed-worn and weary, To find from the ills of mortality rest.

I would not again, though my heart has been anguish'd
While reading these features the pencil has drawn,
And memory calls up her form as it languish'd,

And tells me her spirit has left it and gone:
I would not again, though the power were given,
To life's evanescence that loved one restore-

For she rests, sweetly rests, with her Saviour in heaven,
And drinks of the cup of affliction no more.

A CHURCHYARD COLLOQUY.

203

A Churchyard Colloquy.

HENRY ALFORD.

COME, let us talk of Death, and sweetly play
With his black locks, and listen for a while
To the lone music of the passing wind
In the rank grass that waves above his bed.
Is it not wonderful, the darkest day
Of all the days of life—the hardest wrench
That tries the coward sense, should mix itself
In all our gentlest and most joyous moods,
A not unwelcome visitant-that Thought,
In her quaint wanderings, may not reach a spot
Of lavish beauty, but the spectre form

Meets her with greeting, and she gives herself
To his mysterious converse? I have roam'd
Through many mazes of unregistered
And undetermined fancy; and I know
That when the air grows balmy to my feel
And rarer light falls on me, and sweet sounds.
Dance tremulously round my captive ears,

I soon shall stumble on some moulded grave;
And ever of the thoughts that stay with me,
(There are that flit away) the pleasantest

Is hand in hand with death; and my bright hopes,
Like the strange colors of divided light,

Fade into pale, uncertain violet

About some hallowed precinct. Can it be

That there are blessed mem'ries joined with death,
Of those that parted peacefully, and words
That cling about our hearts, utter'd between
The day and darkness, in Life's twilight time?

Death not the End of Man.

BEATTIE.

SHALL I be left abandoned in the dust,
When fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust,
Deny him, doomed to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair virtue oft must strive

With disappointment, penury and pain?
No; heaven's immortal spring shall yet arrive,
And man's majestic beauty bloom again,

Bright through the eternal year of love's triumphant

reign.

REUNION IN HEAVEN.

205

Reunion in Heaven.

A. C. THOMPSON.

WHAT friend in heaven do we most desire to see? No one can enter there whose heart looks not first of all at him who is seated on the great white throne. What are our ideas of the city of God? Is not Christ the light thereof? Is not the glory which he had before the world was, to be there displayed? Did the Eternal Son take a human form-in it agonize in Gethsemane, be scourged in the judgment hall, crucified on Golgotha, sleep in the sepulchre, and rise to heaven, and shall any other human form divert the eye from that? Are those the scars that speak of precious blood once shed for you? Are those the lips that cried "It is finished?" And will we soon withdraw our gaze? No; much as we love all other friends, there is one in the kingdom of heaven who will make us temporarily forget them all. For years-if there be years there—ay, for centuries, it may be, will the Lamb of God absorb our souls. When we reach the city of God, we shall not, first of all, grasp the hands of present acquaintances. Of such

an affront to the proprieties of heaven, no one, presented at the court of the King of kings, was ever guilty. Bowing down in such gratitude as we never knew before, gazing in a holy ecstasy of love, breaking forth into high and ceaseless praises, there shall we stand age after age. Not, it may be, till the world has been burnt up-not till the elect have all been gathered home to their Father's house, shall we think of looking away from that brightness of the Father's glory, our Saviour, our dear Redeemer. Eternity will be long enough for all the sanctified attachments of earth to have full scope.

The Abode of the Blest.

BOWRING.

THE golden palace of my God.
Towering above the clouds I see,
Beyond the cherub's bright abode,
Higher than angels' thoughts can be:
How can I in those courts appear,
Without a wedding garment on ?
Conduct me, thou Life-giver, there,

Conduct me to thy glorious throne;
And clothe me with thy robes of light,
And lead me through sin's darksome night,
My Saviour and my God.