DEATH IN THE SNOW STORM.

217

What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and bless'd abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind.
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,

A dire descent! beyond the power of frost,
Of faithless bogs, of precipices huge,

Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,

What water, of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.

These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death;
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold;
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse;
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;

Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death!

The Christian's End.

JOSEPH S. BUCKMINSTER.

WOULD you see in what peace a Christian can die? Watch the last gleams of thought which stream from his dying eyes. Do you see anything like apprehension ? The world, it is true, begins to shut in; the shadows of evening collect around his senses. A dark mist thickens, and rests upon the objects which have hitherto engaged his observation. The countenances of his friend become more and more indistinct. The sweet expression of love and

THE CHRISTIAN'S END.

219

friendship are no longer intelligible. His ear wakes no more at the well-known voice of his children, and the soothing accents of tender affection die away unheard, upon his decaying senses. To him the spectacle of human life is drawing to its close, and the curtain is descending, which shuts out this earth, its actors, and its scenes. He is no longer interested in all that is done under the sun.

the

eye

Oh!

of faith opens

that I could now open to you the recesses of his soul; that I could reveal to you the light which darts into the chambers of his understanding. He approaches that world which he has so long seen in faith. The imagination now collects its diminished strength, and wide. Friends! do not stand, thus fixed in sorrow, around this bed of death. Why are you so still and silent? Fear not to move-you cannot disturb the last visions which enchant this holy spirit. Your lamentations break not in upon the songs of seraphs, which inwrap his hearing in ecstasy.

Crowd, if you choose, around his couch—he heeds you not already he sees the spirits of the just advancing together to receive a kindred soul. Press him not with importunities; urge him not with alleviations. Think you he wants now these tones of mortal voices-these material, these gross consolations? No! he is going to add another to the myriads of the just, that are every moment crowding into the portals of heaven! He is entering on a nobler

life. He leaves you-he leaves you, weeping children of mortality, to grope about a little longer among the miseries and sensualities of a wordly life. Already he cries to you from the regions of bliss. Will you not join him there? Will you not taste the sublime joys of faith? There are your predecessors in virtue; there, too, are places for your contemporaries. There are seats for you in the assembly of the just made perfect, in the innumerable company of angels, where is Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and God, the judge of all.

Thoughts.

E. W. B. CANNING.

THE glooms of autumn wrap the faded earth;
The withered leaves fast quit the parent bough,
And in the fitful gust that breathes in sighs
Their requiem, twist downward to decay.
The solitary bird that lingereth

Amid his wonted haunts, sits cheerlessly

Where erst was summer's green and shady prime,
And pours his song to echoing loneliness.
Fallen are the glories of the wavy field,

And the far sun scarce deigns capricious smiles
On the dimmed landscape, lately radiant

With sheen and beauty. Clouds that gloom and chill
The lessening day, scud smileless 'thwart the sky.
The spirit of black desolation comes

To mourn the faded and forgotten past;
In the lone midnight darkness ye may hear
Its wail upon the hill-top, and its step
Along the leaf-strewn valley. It doth moan
To summer's by-gone glories a farewell,
And gather waning autumn to the shroud
Of winter, and its icy burial.

It is the time for musing: and again,
As often wont with melancholy joy,
My spirit takes its pilgrim journey forth
Upon the past. Beside the fountain sweet
Of early bliss, oh long it lingereth!
Each flower of blessed memory it culls,
And bending o'er the ivied burial stones
Of unreturning gladness, lays aside
Its palmer staff; again re-pencileth
The unforgotten records there-and weeps.

As when the long gone voyager returns,
And climbing with unwearied feet, the hills