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JOHN PIERPONT.

THE Rev. John Pierpont, is a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, where he was born 1785. He is now Minister of the Hollis-street Unitarian Church in Boston. The most perfect edition of his poems was published in 1840.

66 PASSING AWAY."

WAS it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light,

And he, his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,

To catch the music that comes from the shore ?-
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,
Are set to words :-as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that fill'd my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.

For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung; (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring That hangs in his cage, a Canary bird swing ;) And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, And, as she enjoy'd it, she seem'd to say, "Passing away! passing away!"

O, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time, as they moved around slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed:-in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride ;-
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,

"Passing away! passing away!" While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade Of thought, or care, stole softly over,

Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,

That marched so calmly around above her, Was a little dimm'd,—as when evening steals Upon noon's hot face:-Yet one couldn't but love her,

For she look'd like a mother, whose first babe lay
Rock'd on her breast, as she swung all day;-
And she seem'd, in the same silver tone to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

While yet I look'd what a change there came!
Her eye was quench'd, and her cheek was wan:
Stooping and staff'd was her wither'd frame,
Yet, just as busily, swung she on ;

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands, that over the dial swept,

Grew crooked and tarnish'd, but on they kept,
And still there came that silver tone

From the shrivell'd lips of the toothless crone,-
(Let me never forget till my dying day
The tone or the burthen of her lay,)—

"Passing away! passing away!"

NAPOLEON.

His falchion flash'd along the Nile;
His hosts he led through Alpine snows;
O'er Moscow's towers, that shook the while,
His eagle flag unroll'd-and froze.

Here sleeps he now alone: not one

Of all the kings whose crowns he gave,
Nor sire, nor brother, wife, nor son,
Hath ever seen or sought his grave.

Here sleeps he now alone; the star
That led him on from crown to crown
Hath sunk; the nations from afar
Gazed as it faded and went down.

He sleeps alone: the mountain cloud

That night hangs round him, and the breath
Of morning scatters, is the shroud
That wraps his mortal form in death.

High is his couch; the ocean flood
Far, far below by storms is curl'd,
As round him heaved, while high he stood,
A stormy and inconstant world.

Hark! Comes there from the Pyramids,
And from Siberia's wastes of snow,

And Europe's fields, a voice that bids
The world he awed to mourn him? No:

The only, the perpetual dirge

That's heard there, is the seabird's cry, The mournful murmur of the surge,

The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.

MY CHILD.

I CANNOT make him dead!
His fair sunshiny head

Is ever bounding round my study chair;
Yet, when my eyes, now dim

With tears, I turn to him,

The vision vanishes-he is not there!

I walk my parlour floor,
And, through the open door,

I hear a footfall on the chamber stair;

I'm stepping toward the hall

To give the boy a call;

And then bethink me that-he is not there!

I thread the crowded street;

A satchell'd lad I meet,

With the same beaming eyes and colour'd hair:
And, as he's running by,

Follow him with my eye,
Scarcely believing that-he is not there!

I know his face is hid
Under the coffin lid;

Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead;
My hand that marble felt;

O'er it in prayer I knelt;

Yet my heart whispers that-he is not there!

I cannot make him dead!
When passing by the bed,

So long watch'd over with parental care,
My spirit and my eye

Seek it inquiringly,

Before the thought comes that he is not there!

When, at the cool, gray break

Of day, from sleep I wake,

With my first breathing of the morning air

My soul goes up, with joy,

To Him who gave my boy,

Then comes the sad thought that-he is not there!

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