Puslapio vaizdai
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MY CHILD.

To welcome me, within my humble home ;-
There is an eye with love's devotion bright,
The darkness of existence to illume!

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Then why complain?-When death shall cast his blight Over the spirit, then my bones shall rest

Beneath these trees-and from thy swelling breast, O'er them thy song shall pour like a rich flood of light.

MY CHILD.

BY JOHN PIERPONT.

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 satchel'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!

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MY CHILD.

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!

When at the day's calm close,
Before we seek repose,

I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer,
Whate'er I may be saying,

I am, in spirit, praying

For our boy's spirit, though-he is not there!

Not there!-Where, then, is he?

The form I used to see

Was but the raiment that he used to wear.
The grave, that now doth press

Upon that cast-off dress,

Is but his wardrobe lock'd;-he is not there!

LAKE SUPERIOR.

He lives!-In all the past
He lives; nor, to the last,

Of seeing him again will I despair;
In dreams I see him now;

And, on his angel brow,

I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!"

Yes, we all live to God!
FATHER, thy chastening rod

So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear,
That, in the spirit land,

Meeting at thy right hand,

'T will be our heaven to find that he is there!

LAKE SUPERIOR,

BY SAMUEL G. GOODRICH.

"FATHER OF LAKES!" thy waters bend
Beyond the eagle's utmost view,
When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send
Back to the sky its world of blue.

Boundless and deep, the forests weave
Their twilight shade thy borders o'er,
And threatening cliffs, like giants, heave
Their rugged forms along thy shore.

Pale Silence, mid thy hollow caves,
With listening ear, in sadness broods;
Or startled Echo, o'er thy waves,

Sends the hoarse wolf-notes of thy woods,

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LAKE SUPERIOR.

Nor can the light canoes, that glide
Across thy breast like things of air,
Chase from thy lone and level tide

The spell of stillness reigning there.

Yet round this waste of wood and wave,
Unheard, unseen, a spirit lives,
That, breathing o'er each rock and cave,
To all a wild, strange aspect gives.

The thunder-riven oak, that flings
Its grisly arms athwart the sky,
A sudden, startling image brings

To the lone traveler's kindled eye.

The gnarl'd and braided boughs, that show
Their dim forms in the forest shade,
Like wrestling serpents seen, and throw
Fantastic horrors through the glade.

The very echoes round this shore

Have caught a strange and gibbering tone;
For they have told the war-whoop o'er,
Till the wild chorus is their own.

Wave of the wilderness, adieu!

Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds and woods!

Roll on, thou element of blue,

And fill these awful solitudes!

Thou hast no tale to tell of man

GOD is thy theme. Ye sounding caves— Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan

Deems as a bubble all your waves!

THE NOTES OF THE BIRDS.

BY I. M'LELLAN, JR.

WELL do I love those various harmonies
That ring so gayly in Spring's budding woods,
And in the thickets, and green, quiet haunts,
And lonely copses of the Summer-time,
And in red Autumn's ancient solitudes.

If thou art pain'd with the world's noisy stir,
Or crazed with its mad tumults, and weigh'd down
With any of the ills of human life;

If thou art sick and weak, or mournest at the loss

Of brethren gone to that far-distant land

To which we all do pass, gentle and poor,
The gayest and the gravest, all alike,
Then turn into the peaceful woods, and hear
The thrilling music of the forest birds.

How rich the varied choir! The unquiet finch
Calls from the distant hollows, and the wren
Uttereth her sweet and mellow plaint at times,
And the thrush mourneth where the kalmia hangs
Its crimson-spotted cups, or chirps, half hid
Amid the lowly dogwood's snowy flowers,
And the blue jay flits by, from tree to tree,
And, spreading its rich pinions, fills the ear
With its shrill-sounding and unsteady cry.

With the sweet airs of Spring, the robin comes, And in her simple song there seems to gush A strain of sorrow when she visiteth

Her last year's wither'd nest. But when the gloom Of the deep twilight falls, she takes her perch

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