The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green,
Then slowly disappears;

The mosses creep, the gray stones lean,
Earth hides his date and years;

But, long before the once-loved name

Is sunk or worn away,

No lip the silent dust may claim,

That pressed the breathing clay.

Go where the ancient pathway guides,
See where our sires laid down
Their smiling babes, their cherished brides,

The patriarchs of the town;

Hast thou a tear for buried love?

A sigh for transient power?

All that a century left above,

Go, read it in an hour!

Then, quite forgetting the command

In life's exulting burst

Of early glee, let go my hand,
Joyous as at the first.

And now I did not check him more,
For, taught by Nature's face,
I had grown wiser than before,
Even in that moment's space:
She spread no funeral pall above

That patch of churchyard ground,
But the same azure vault of love
As hung o'er all around.

And white clouds o'er that spot would pass,

As freely as elsewhere;

The sunshine on no other grass

A richer hue might wear.

And formed from out that very mould

In which the dead did lie,

The daisy with its eye of gold
Looked up into the sky.

The rook was wheeling overhead,

Nor hastened to be gone

The small bird did its glad notes shed,
Perched on a gray head-stone.

And God, I said, would never give
This light upon the earth,
Nor bid in childhood's heart to live
These springs of gushing mirth,

If our one wisdom were to mourn,
And linger with the dead,

To nurse, as wisest, thoughts forlorn
Of worm and earthy bed.

O no! the glory earth puts on,

The child's unchecked delight, Both witness to a triumph won

(If we but read aright).

So plaintively the soft sea wailed,

So blue and breezy were the skies,
So tranquilly the white ships sailed
In pomp before my eyes,

The very sweetness of it all
Did there my willing spirit call

To moralize.

The dial on the chapel side

With ivy tendrils was entwined,
As though the flight of time to hide
Were office true and kind;

While, on the breath of ocean borne,
The restless shoots in playful scorn
Waved unconfined.

This incident, the quiet hour,

The sanctity of that lone place,
Conspired to give the sight a power
Of true pathetic grace;

And, as I gazed on it, methought
That somewhat of a sign was wrought

For me to trace.

For I interpreted the gesture,

To illustrate how holy faith

Was the poor soul's unfading vesture,
The saint's immortal wreath;

And, with significance sublime,
It taught how faith abolished time
By killing death.

Mute preacher! pensive evergreen!
O may I learn, this day, from thee,
The obscure sage of this lone scene
Hard by the mighty sea,

How faith may, through Another's merit,
For all the sons of time inherit

Eternity!

Q

F. W. Faber.

THE CLOSE OF AUTUMN.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove the withered leaves lie dead,
They rustle to the eddying gust and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood,
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves-the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours:
The rain is falling where they lie-but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the briar-rose and the orchis died, amid the summer's glow;
But on the hill the golden rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.