Yet bliss awaits the holy heart,
When friends rejoin in heaven,
Where streams of joy glide ever on,
Around the Lord's eternal throne.

A CHURCH-YARD SCENE.

How sweet and solemn, all alone,
With reverent steps, from stone to stone
In a small village church-yard lying,
O'er intervening flowers to move,
And, as we read the names unknown,
Of young and old, to judgment gone,
And hear, in the calm air above,
Time onwards softly flying,
To meditate, in Christian love,
Upon the dead and dying!

*

Such is the scene around me now:-
A little church-yard on the brow
Of a green, pastoral hill:

Its sylvan village sleeps below,
And faintly, here, is heard the flow
Of Woodburn's summer rill;

A place where all things mournful meet,
And, yet, the sweetest of the sweet,
The stillest of the still!

With what a pensive beauty fall
Across the mossy, mouldering wall

That rose-tree's cluster'd arches! See !

The robin-redbreast, warily,

Bright through the blossoms leaves his nest :
Sweet ingrate! through the winter blest
At the firesides of men,-but shy
Through all the sultry summer hours
He hides himself among the flowers,
In his own wild festivity.

What lulling sound, and shadow cool
Hangs half the darken'd church-yard o'er,
From thy green depths so beautiful,
Thou gorgeous sycamore!

Oft have the holy wine and bread
Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent,
Where many a bright and hoary head
Bow'd at that awful sacrament.

Now, all beneath the turf are laid
On which they sat, and sang, and pray'd.

Above that consecrated tree

Ascends the tapering spire, that seems
To lift the soul up silently

To heaven, with all its dreams;
While in the belfry, deep and low,
From his heaved bosom's purple gleams
The dove's continuous murmurs flow,
A dirge-like song, half bliss, half wo,
The voice so lonely seems.

15

A PRAYER,

UNDER THE PRESSURE OF VIOLENT ANGUISH.

O THOU Great Being! what thou art
Surpasses me to know;

Yet sure I am that known to thee
Are all thy works below.

Thy creature here before thee stands,
All wretched and distress'd;

Yet sure those ilis that wring my soul
Obey thy high behest.

Sure thou, Almighty, canst not act
From cruelty or wrath!

O, free my weary eyes from tears,
Or close them fast in death!

But if I must afflicted be,

To suit some wise design;
Then man my soul with firm resolves
To bear, and not repine!

PARENTS.

EXODUS XX. 12.

THE voice of nature, yea, the voice of God,

Commands to honor those that gave us birth,— Even her, from whose supporting bosom flow'd

By far the sweetest stream that flows on earth; Whose tongue of kindness never knew a dearth Of soothing words that could our griefs allay

Even him who listen'd to our prattling mirth, Who early taught our infant lips to pray, And led our tottering steps to walk in wisdom's way.

A parent is indeed a tender friend,

And if once lost, we never more shall find A bosom that so tremblingly can blend

Its feelings with our own congenial mind; Our lips may speak their anguish to the wind That hurries heedlessly and wildly by—

Our hearts, to lonely agony consign'd, May throb without relief-for no reply Comes from the mouldering breasts that in their gravebed lie.

And then we pause to think-alas! how late!—
Of deeds that wrung a parent's heart with pain;
And oh! could we but open death's dark gate,
And lead them back into the world again—

Oh! but once more to see their face!-'tis vain!— Once more to hear their voice!-'t is sweetly driven Across our fancy, and expires,-and then We wish ourselves away-away to heaven,

To weep upon their breast, and there to be forgiven.

SACRED LYRIC.

WHERE can I go from Thee!

All-present Deity!

Nature, and Time, and Thought, thine impress bear; Through earth, or sea, or sky,

Though wide and far I fly,

I turn, and find Thee present with me there.

The perfume of the rose,

And every flower that blows,

All mark thy love; the clusters of the vale,
The corn that crowns the fields,
The fruits the garden yields,

Proclaim the bounties that can never fail.

The vapor and the cloud,
The thunder bursting loud,

Speak of thy majesty in words of flame;
The ocean as it roars,

Lashing the rocks and shores,

Declares from what a mighty hand it came.

The vasty globes that roll,

Each on his own firm pole,

Through all the boundless fields of space alone,