To the Departed. ANONYMOUS. THY rest is with the fallen great, Where hundreds, in their last cold state, The warrior and his bride are there, And he, whose high and stately look. O'er many a shield and helm of price, And faint from arch and mouldering stone Of faded power and glories spent ; TO THE DEPARTED. Where dust with kindred dust recline, Oh! better had thy tomb been made Beneath the unbounded sky, Where tree and flower might cast their shade, There should the fading evening sleep, With glance of love and tongue of praise, 213 The insect lamp of deepening night— Faith to the Bereaved. J. S. BUCKMINSTER. WOULD you know the value of faith to the bereaved ? Go and follow a corpse to the grave. See the body deposited there, and hear the earth thrown in upon all that remains of your friend. Return now, if you will, and brood over the lesson which your senses have given you, and derive from it what consolation you can. You have learned nothing but an unconsoling fact. No voice of comfort issues from the tomb: all is still there, and blank, and lifeless, and has been so for ages. You see nothing but bodies dissolving and successively mingling with the clods which cover them, the grass growing over the spot, and the trees waving in sullen majesty over this region of eternal silence. And what is there more? Nothing. Come, Faith, and THE FINAL REUNION. 215 people these deserts! Come, and reanimate these regions of forgetfulness! Mothers! take again your children to vour arms, for they are living. Sons! your aged parents are coming forth in the vigor of regenerated years. Friends! behold your dearest connections are waiting to embrace you. The tombs are burst; generations long since in slumbers are awakening! They are coming from the east and the west, from the north and the south, to constitute the community of the blessed! The Final Reunion. ROBERT BLAIR. WHEN the dread trumpet sounds, the slumb'ring dust, Not unattentive to the call, shall wake, And ev'ry joint possess its proper place, With a new elegance of form unknown To its first state. Nor shall the conscious soul Shall rush, with all th' inspiration of a man. That's new come home, who having long been absent, With haste runs over ev'ry different room, In pain to see the whole. Thrice happy meeting! Nor time, nor death, shall ever part them more. Leaves the wide air, and in some lonely brake Death in the Snow Storm. JAMES THOMSON. As thus the snows arise; and foul, and fierce, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home |