For friends supported not her parting soul,

And whispered words of comfort kind and sweet, When treading onward to that final goal

Where the still bridegroom waited for her feet Alone she walked, yet with a fearless tread, Down to Death's chamber, and his bridal bed!

Thomas Buchanan Read.

THE STRANGER ON THE SILL.

BETWEEN broad fields of wheat and corn

Is the lowly home where I was born;
The peach-tree leans against the wall,
And the woodbine wanders over all;
There is the shaded doorway still,
But a stranger's foot has crossed the sill.

There is the barn-and, as of yore,
I can smell the hay from the open door,
And see the busy swallow's throng,
And hear the pewee's mournful song;
But the stranger comes-oh! painful proof—
His sheaves are piled to the heated roof.

There is the orchard-the very trees
Where my childhood knew long hours of ease,
And watched the shadowy moments run
Till my life imbibed more shade than sun;
The swing from the bough still sweeps the air,
But the stranger's children are swinging there.

There bubbles the shady spring below,

With its bulrush brook where the hazels grow;

"Twas there I found the calamus-root,

And watched the minnows poise and shoot,

And heard the robin lave its wing,

But the stranger's bucket is at the spring.

O ye, who daily cross the sill,
Step lightly, for I love it still;

And when you crowd the old barn-eaves,
Then think what countless harvest-sheaves
Have passed within that scented door
To gladden eyes that are no more!

Deal kindly with these orchard-trees;
And when your children crowd their knees
Their sweetest fruit they shall impart,
As if old memories stirred their heart:
To youthful sport still leave the swing,
And in sweet reverence hold the spring.

The barn, the trees, the brook, the birds,
The meadows with their lowing herds,
The woodbine on the cottage wall—
My heart still lingers with them all.
Ye strangers on my native sill,
Step lightly, for I love it still!

A

PASSING THE ICEBERGS.

FEARLESS shape of brave device,

Our vessel drives through mist and rain,

Between the floating fleets of ice

The navies of the northern main.

These arctic ventures, blindly hurled
The proofs of Nature's olden force--
Like fragments of a crystal world

Long shattered from its skyey course.

These are the buccaneers that fright

The middle sea with dream of wrecks, And freeze the south winds in their flight, And chain the Gulf-stream to their decks.

At every dragon prow and helm

There stands some Viking as of yore;

Grim heroes from the boreal realm
Where ODIN rules the spectral shore.

And oft beneath the sun or moon

Their swift and eager falchions glowWhile, like a storm-vexed wind, the rune Comes chafing through some beard of snow.

And when the far north flashes up

With fires of mingled red and gold,

They know that many a blazing cup
Is brimming to the absent bold.

Up signal there, and let us hail

Yon looming phantom as we pass Note all her fashion, hull, and sail, Within the compass of your glass.

See at her mast the steadfast glow

Of that one star of ODIN's throne; Up with our flag, and let us show The Constellation on our own!

And speak her well; for she might say,

If from her heart the words could thaw,
Great news from some far frozen bay,
Or the remotest Esquimaux.

Might tell of channels yet untold,

That sweep the pole from sea to sea;
Of lands which God designs to hold
A mighty people yet to be :-

Of wonders which alone prevail

Where day and darkness dimly meet ;Of all which spreads the arctic sail;

Of FRANKLIN and his venturous fleet:

How, haply, at some glorious goal

His anchor holds-his sails are furled; That Fame has named him on her scroll, "COLUMBUS of the Polar World."

Or how his ploughing barks wedge on

Through splintering fields, with battered shares,

Lit only by that spectral dawn,

The mask that mocking Darkness wears;—

Or how, o'er embers black and few,

The last of shivered masts and spars,

He sits amid his frozen crew

In council with the Norland stars.

No answer but the sullen flow

Of Ocean heaving long and vast ;

An argosy of ice and snow,

The voiceless North swings proudly past.

THE SEA-KING.

(FROM "THE HOUSE BY THE Sra.”)

A MONARCH reigned beneath the sea

On the wreck of a myriad thrones,—

The collected ruins of Tyranny,
Shattered by the hand of Destiny,

And scattered abroad with maniac glee,
Like a gibbeted pirate's bones.

Alone, supreme, he reigned apart,

On the throne of a myriad thrones,— Where, sitting close to the world's red heart Which pulsed swift heat through his ocean mart, He could hear each heavy throe and start,

As she heaved her earthquake groans.

He gazed through the shadowy deep which shields His throne of a myriad thrones,—

And saw the many variart keels

Driving over the watery fields,
Some with thunderous and flashing wheels
Linking the remotest zones.

Oft, like an eagle that swoops in air,
He saw, from his throne of thrones,
The winged anchors with eager stare
Leap midway down to the Ocean's lair—
While hanging plummets gazed in despair
At the unreached sands and stones!

Along his realm lie mountainous bulks,

The tribute to his throne of thrones,