OET of Nature, thou hast wept to

know

That things depart which never

may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship and love's

first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to

mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did
shine

On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar :
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,—
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to

be.

Mutability

E are as clouds that veil the mid

night moon;

How restlessly they speed, and

gleam, and quiver,

Streaking the darkness radiantly! — yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for

ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. A dream has power to poison

sleep;

We rise. One wandering thought pollutes

the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! - For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free :
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like this mor-

row;

Nought may endure but Mutability.

"There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."- Ecclesiastes.

smile

Which the meteor beam of a starless night

Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is

gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly

way,

And the billows of cloud that around thee roll

Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of

steel;

When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the won-
drous ear

No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?