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Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend;

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly pleasing tear.

O gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand,

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band,

(As by the impious thou art seen,)

With thundering voice and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh goddess, wear,

Thy milder influence impart,

Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound, my heart. The generous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love, and to forgive,

Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are to feel, and know myself a man.

THOMAS GRAY.

Resignation.

'HERE is no flock, however watched and tended,

THER

But one dead lamb is there;

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair.

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RESIGNATION.

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted.

Let us be patient; these severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise;

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors
Amid these earthly damps;

What seem to us but dim funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no death! What seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portals we call death.

She is not dead-the child of our affection-
But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day, we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when, with raptures wild,

In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest-

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We cannot wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing

The grief that must have way.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

My Child.

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 parlor 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!

MY CHILD.

I thread the crowded street;

A satcheled lad I meet,

With the same beaming eyes and colored hair ;
And, as he's running by,

Follow him with my eye,

Scarcely believing that he is not there!

I know his face is hid

Under the coffin lid;

Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair;
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 watched over with parental care,
My spirit and my eye

Seek him 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!

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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 locked ;-he is not there!

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!

JOHN PIERPONT.

The Alpine Shepherd.

WH

HEN on my ear your loss was knelled,
And tender sympathy upburst,

A little spring from memory welled

Which once had quenched my bitter thirst;

And I was fain to bear to you

A portion of its mild relief, That it might be as cooling dew,

To steal some fever from your grief.

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