THOU GOD SEEST ME.

E'en from myself sometimes I part-
Unconscious sleep is nightly death ;
Yet surely by my bed Thou art,

To prompt my pulse, inspire my breath.

227

Of all that I have done or said

How little can I now recall! Forgotten things to me are dead;

With Thee they live, Thou know'st them all.

The moment comes, the only one

Of all my time to be foretold;

Though when, and where, and how, can none Of all the race of man unfold.

That moment comes when strength must fail, When health, and hope, and comfort flown, I must go down into the vale

And shade of death with Thee alone.

Alone with Thee, in that dread strife,
Uphold me through mine agony;
And gently be this dying life

Exchanged for immortality.

Then, when th' unbodied spirit lands
Where flesh and blood have never trod,
And in the unvail'd presence stands,
Of Thee, my Saviour and my God;

Be mine eternal portion this,

Since Thou wert always here with me, That I may view Thy face in bliss,

And be for evermore with Thee!

"PASSING AWAY."-A DREAM. 229

Passing Away."-A Dream.

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-
66 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 filled 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 round slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seem'd to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed:-in a few short hours
The bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretch'd hands, and flung
This way and that, as she dancing swung
In the fullness of grace and of 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.

"PASSING AWAY."-A

DREAM.

231

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 march'd so calmly around, above her, Was a little dimm'd,-as when Evening steals Upon Noon's hot face:-yet one could not 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!

66

יין .

While yet I look'd, what a change there came! Her eye was quench'd and her cheek was wan; Stooping and staffed 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 shriveled lips of the toothless crone,(Let me never forget till my dying day

The tone or the burden of her lay,)—

66

Passing away! Passing away!"