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 ?- But no; it was not a fairy's shell, Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear 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 "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, 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 While yet I look'd what a change there came! The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; Grew crooked and tarnish'd, but on they kept, From the shrivell'd lips of the toothless crone,- "Passing away! passing away!" NAPOLEON. His falchion flash'd along the Nile; Here sleeps he now alone: not one Of all the kings whose crowns he gave, Here sleeps he now alone; the star He sleeps alone: the mountain cloud That night hangs round him, and the breath High is his couch; the ocean flood Hark! Comes there from the Pyramids, And Europe's fields, a voice that bids 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! Is ever bounding round my study chair; With tears, I turn to him, The vision vanishes-he is not there! I walk my parlour floor, 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: Follow him with my eye, I know his face is hid Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead; O'er it in prayer I knelt; Yet my heart whispers that-he is not there! I cannot make him dead! So long watch'd over with parental care, 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! |