Come from the shadow of those realms unknown, Where now thy thoughts dismay'd and darkling rove; Come to the kindly region all thine own,

The home, still bright for thee with guardian love.

Happy, fair child! that yet a mother's voice
Can win thee back from visionary strife!-
Oh, shall my soul, thus waken'd to rejoice,
Start from the dreamlike wilderness of life?

THE CHARMED PICTURE.*

"Oh! that those lips had language !-Life hath pass'd
With me but roughly since I saw thee last."

Cowper.

THINE eyes are charm'd-thine earnest eyes—

Thou image of the dead!

A spell within their sweetness lies,

A virtue thence is shed.

Oft in their meek blue light enshrined,
A blessing seems to be,

And sometimes there my wayward mind
A still reproach can see:

And sometimes pity-soft and deep,
And quivering through a tear;
Even as if love in heaven could weep,
For grief left drooping here.

* See Frontispiece to vol. vii.

THE CHARMED PICTURE.

And oh, my spirit needs that balm !
Needs it 'midst fitful mirth!
And in the night-hour's haunted calm,
And by the lonely hearth.

Look on me thus, when hollow praise
Hath made the weary pine

For one true tone of other days,
One glance of love like thine!

Look on me thus, when sudden glee
Bears my quick heart along,
On wings that struggle to be free,
As bursts of skylark song,

In vain, in vain!-too soon are felt
The wounds they cannot flee;
Better in childlike tears to melt,
Pouring my soul on thee!

Sweet face, that o'er my childhood shone,

Whence is thy power of change, Thus ever shadowing back my own,

The rapid and the strange?

Whence are they charm'd-those earnest eyes?

-I know the mystery well!

In mine own trembling bosom lies

The spirit of the spell!

Of Memory, Conscience, Love, 'tis born

Oh! change no longer, thou!

55

For ever be the blessing worn

On thy pure thoughtful brow!

PARTING WORDS.

"One struggle more, and I am free."

BYRON.

LEAVE me, oh leave me !-unto all below
Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell;
Thou makest those mortal regions, whence I go,
Too mighty in their loveliness-farewell,

That I may part in peace!

Leave me!-thy footstep, with its lightest sound, The very shadow of thy waving hair,

Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,

Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear—Oh! bid the conflict cease!

I hear thy whisper-and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart;
Thou bidd'st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart;
Dear one! this must not be.

The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky—
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit's gaze
Thou art all earth to me!

THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD.

;

Shut out the sunshine from my dying room,
The jasmine's breath, the murmur of the bee
Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom!
They speak of love, of summer, and of thee,

Too much-and death is here!

Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?
Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray
From the dread hour so near!

If I could but draw courage from the light
Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!

-Not now! 'twill not be now!-my aching sight Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,

Bearing all strength away!

Leave me!-thou comest between my heart and Heaven

I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die!

-Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven? -Return! thy parting wakes mine agony!

-Oh, yet awhile delay!

THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD.*

THOU'RT passing hence, my brother!
Oh! my earliest friend, farewell!

"Messages from the living to the dead are not uncommon in the Highlands. The Gaels have such a ceaseless

Thou'rt leaving me, without thy voice,
In a lonely home to dwell;

And from the hills, and from the hearth,
And from the household-tree,
With thee departs the lingering mirth,
The brightness goes with thee.

But thou, my friend, my brother!

Thou'rt speeding to the shore

Where the dirgelike tone of parting words
Shall smite the soul no more!
And thou wilt see our holy dead,
The lost on earth and main:
Into the sheaf of kindred hearts,
Thou wilt be bound again!

Tell, then, our friend of boyhood,
That yet his name is heard

On the blue mountains, whence his youth
Pass'd like a swift bright bird.

The light of his exulting brow,
The vision of his glee,

Are on me still-Oh! still I trust
That smile again to see.

And tell our fair young sister
The rose cut down in spring,

consciousness of immortality, that their departed friends are considered as merely absent for a time, and permitted to relieve the hours of separation by occasional intercourse with the objects of their earliest affections."-See the Notes to Mrs Brunton's Works.