Hark to the distant bell!-an hour is gone!
Enter yon silent room with footsteps light;
Our brief appointed duty must be done-

To bathe the face, and stay death's rapid blight :
To bare the rigid face, and dip the cloth
That hides a mortal, "crushed before the moth."

The bathing liquid scents the chilly room;
How spectral white are shroud and veiling lace
On yonder side-board, in the fearful gloom!

Take off the muffler from the sleeper's face :You spoke, my friend, of sunken cheek and eye— Ah what a form of beauty here doth lie!

Never hath Art, from purest wax or stone,
So fair an image and so lustrous wrought;
It is as if a beam from heaven had shown

A weary angel in sweet slumber caught !—
The smiling lip, the warmly tinted cheek,
And all so calm, so saint-like, and so meek!

She softly sleeps,-and yet how unlike sleep!
No fairy dreams flit o'er that marble face,
As ripples play along the breezy deep,

As shadows o'er the field each other chase;
The spirit dreams no more, but wakes in light,
And freely wings its flashing seraph-flight.

She sweetly sleeps, her lips and eyelids sealed;
No ruby jewel heaves upon her breast,
With her quick breath now hidden, now revealed,
As setting stars long tremble in the west;
But white and still as drifts of moonlit snow
Her folded cerements and her flushless brow.

Oh there is beauty in the winter moon,

And beauty in the brilliant summer flower, And in the liquid eye and luring tone

Of radiant Love's and rosy Laughter's hour; But where is beauty, in this blooming world, Like death upon a maiden's lip impearled?

Veil we the dead, and close the open door.

Perhaps the spirit, ere it soar above, Would watch its clay alone, and hover o'er

The face it once had kindled into love; Commune we hence, O friend, this wakeful night, Of death made lovely by so blest a sight.

JOHN HAY.

[Born about 1830. A Colonel in the United States' Army, and author of the volume, Little Breeches, and other Pieces. The more distinctive side of Colonel Hay's talent is the humorous].

THE MONKS OF BASLE.

I TORE this weed from the rank dark soil
Where it grew in the monkish time;
I trimmed it close, and set it again
In a border of modern rhyme.

I.

Long years ago, when the Devil was loose,
And faith was sorely tried,

Three monks of Basle went out to walk
In the quiet eventide.

A breeze as pure as the breath of Heaven
Blew fresh through the cloister-shades;
A sky as glad as the smile of Heaven

Blushed rose o'er the minster-glades.

But, scorning the lures of summer and sense,
The monks passed on in their walk;
Their eyes were abased, their senses slept,
Their souls were in their talk.

In the tough grim talk of the monkish days
They hammered and slashed about—
Dry husks of logic-old scraps of creed-
And the cold grey dreams of doubt-

And whether Just or Justified

Was the Church's mystic Head—

And whether the bread was changed to God,
Or God became the bread.

But of human hearts outside their walls
They never paused to dream,

And they never thought of the love of God
That smiled in the twilight gleam.

2.

As these three monks went bickering on
By the foot of a spreading tree,
Out from its heart of verdurous gloom
A song burst wild and free-

A wordless carol of life and love,

Of nature free and wild;

And the three monks paused in the evening shade,
Looked up at each other, and smiled.

And tender and gay the bird sang on,
And cooed and whistled and trilled;
And the wasteful wealth of life and love
From his happy heart was spilled.

The song had power on the grim old monks
In the light of the rosy skies;

And as they listened the years rolled back,
And tears came into their eyes.

The years rolled back, and they were young,
With the hearts and hopes of men;

They plucked the daisies, and kissed the girls,
Of dear dead summers again.

3.

But the eldest monk soon broke the spell. ""Tis sin and shame," quoth he,

66

To be turned from talk of holy things
By a bird's cry from a tree.

"Perchance the Enemy of Souls

Hath come to tempt us so !

Let us try by the power of the Awful Word
If it be he, or no!"

To Heaven the three monks raised their hands. "We charge thee, speak!" they said,

"By His dread Name who shall one day come To judge the quick and the dead—

"Who art thou? Speak!" The bird laughed loud: "I am the devil," he said.

The monks on their faces fell; the bird

Away through the twilight sped.

A horror fell on those holy men
(The faithful legends say);

And one by one from the face of earth
They pined and vanished away.

4.

So goes the tale of the monkish books;
The moral who runs may read—
He has no ears for Nature's voice
Whose soul is the slave of creed.

Not all in vain with beauty and love
Has God the world adorned;
And he who Nature scorns and mocks
By Nature is mocked and scorned.

REMORSE.

SAD is the thought of sunniest days
Of love and rapture perished,
And shine through memory's tearful haze
The eyes once fondliest cherished;
Reproachful is the ghost of toys

That charmed while life was wasted:

But saddest is the thought of joys

That never yet were tasted.

Sad is the vague and tender dream
Of dead love's lingering kisses,
To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam
Of unreturning blisses;

Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride
For the pitiless death that won them-
But the saddest wail is for lips that died
With the virgin dew upon them.

THE PRAIRIE.

THE skies are blue above my head,
The prairie green below,
And flickering o'er the tufted grass
The shifting shadows go,—
Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds
Fleck white the tranquil skies,
Black javelins darting where aloft
The whirring pheasant flies.

A glimmering plain in drowsy trance

The dim horizon bounds,

Where all the air is resonant

With sleepy summer sounds—
The life that sings among the flowers,

The lisping of the breeze,

The hot cicala's sultry cry,

The murmurous dream of bees.

The butterfly-a flying flower-
Wheels swift in flashing rings,
And flutters round his quiet kin,
With brave flame-mottled wings.
The wild pinks burst in crimson fire,
The phlox' bright clusters shine,
And prairie-cups are swinging free
To spill their airy wine.