THE TOMB OF MADAME LANGHANS. 49 THE TOMB OF MADAME LANGHANS.* "To a mysteriously consorted pair This place is consecrate; to death and life, WORDSWORTH. How many hopes were borne upon thy bier, Of mingled prayer they told; of Sabbath hours; How many hopes have sprung in radiance hence! Their trace yet lights the dust where thou art sleeping! A solemn joy comes o'er me, and a sense Of triumph, blent with nature's gush of weeping, * At Hindlebank, near Berne, she is represented as bursting from the sepulchre, with her infant in her arms, at the sound of the last trumpet. An inscription on the tomb concludes thus:- "Here am I, O God! with the child whom thou hast given me.' VOL. VI. D As, kindling up the silent stone, I see The glorious vision, caught by faith, of thee. Slumberer! love calls thee, for the night is past: Put on the immortal beauty of thy waking! Captive! and hear'st thou not the trumpet's blast, The long, victorious note, thy bondage breaking? Thou hear'st, thou answer'st, "God of earth and heaven! Here am I, with the child whom thou hast given !" THE EXILE'S DIRGE.* "Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Cymbeline. ["I attended a funeral where there were a number of the German settlers present. After I had performed such service as is usual on similar occasions, a most venerablelooking old man came forward, and asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther's Hymns, and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and using the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea from the Vaterland, a word which often occurred in this hymn. It was a long, slow, and mournful air, which they sung as they bore the body along the words mein Gott.'' mein Bruder,' and ' Vaterland,' died away in distant echoes THE EXILE's dirge. 51 amongst the woods. I shall long remember that funeral hymn."-FLINT'S Recollections of the Valley of the Mississippi.] THERE went a dirge through the forest's gloom. -An exile was borne to a lonely tomb. "Brother!" (so the chant was sung So swell'd the chant; and the deep wind's moan Seem'd through the cedars to murmur-" Gone!” "Brother! by the rolling Rhine Far, far hence !—yet sea nor shore God hath call'd thee to that band "The Fatherland!"—with that sweet word A burst of tears 'midst the strain was heard. "Brother! were we there with thee As even now this dust of thine; And the requiem died in the forest's gloom; THE DREAMING CHILD. "Alas! what kind of grief should thy years know? When no breath troubles them." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. AND is there sadness in thy dreams, my boy? What should the cloud be made of?-blessed child' THE DREAMING CHILD. Thy spirit, borne upon a breeze of joy, 53 All day hath ranged through sunshine, clear, yet mild: And now thou tremblest !—wherefore?—in thy soul From thee no love hath gone; thy mind's young eye A weary searcher for a viewless home: Nor hath thy sense been quicken'd unto pain, Yet now, on billows of strange passion toss'd, Awake! they sadden me—those early tears, Awful to watch, even rolling through a dream, Forcing wild spray-drops but from childhood's eyes! Wake, wake! as yet thy life's transparent stream Should wear the tinge of none but summer skies. |