A SEPTEMBER EVENING ON THE BANKS OF THE

MOSHASSUCK.

BY SARAH H. WHITMAN.

"Now to the sessions of sweet, silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past."

Shakspeare's Sonnets.

AGAIN September's golden day

Serenely still, intensely bright,
Fades on the umbered hills away
And melts into the coming night.
Again Moshassuck's silver tide

Reflects each green herb on its side,
Each tasselled wreath and tangling vine
Whose tendrils o'er its margin twine.

And standing on its velvet shore

Where yesternight with thee I stood,

I trace its devious course once more
Far winding on through vale and wood.
Now glimmering through yon golden mist,
By the last glinting sunbeams kissed,
Now lost where lengthening shadows fall
From hazel-copse and moss-fringed wall.

Near where yon rocks the stream inurn
The lonely gentian blossoms still,
Still wave the star-flower and the fern

O'er the soft outline of the hill;

While far aloft where pine-trees throw

Their shade athwart the sunset glow, Thin vapors cloud the illumined air

And parting day-light lingers there.

But ah, no longer thou art near
This varied loveliness to see,
And I, though fondly lingering here
To-night can only think on thee—
The flowers thy gentle hand caressed
Still lie unwithered on my breast,

And still thy footsteps print the shore
Where thou and I may rove no more.

Again I hear the murmuring fall

Of water from some distant dell,

The beetle's hum, the cricket's call,
And, far away, that evening bell-
Again, again those sounds I hear,

But oh, how desolate and drear
They seem to night-how like a knell
The music of that evening bell.

Again the new moon in the west,
Scarce seen upon yon golden sky,
Hangs o'er the mountain's purple crest

With one pale planet trembling nigh,

And beautiful her pearly light

As when we blessed its beams last night, But thou art on the far blue sea,

And I can only think on thee.

LAST NIGHT OF THE YEAR.

BY THE REV. EDWARD B. HALL.

OUR sympathy with this hour is almost wholly retrospective. It belongs to the Past. It has little association with the morrow. The morrow has a character entirely separate-not less important, but distinct. We may not close our hearts, if they are right toward the Giver we cannot close them, to the greatness and power of a new gift of existence. We all share the natural and ever fresh joy, which an opening year awakens. But the impression is playful and evanescent, compared with the concentration and awe, with which the mind hangs upon the few, not lightly flying, but soberly moving and gazing moments of the parting season. There is power in all seasons, and all impressions are mixed. But there is one element here that belongs to no other. True, it is an association that rests upon a division of time once artificial and wholly conventional. But it has become real. And now it takes hold of the natural and the powerful. It dwells in a deep and sober conviction, that we are waiting to catch the last message, we are losing the last day, we are enveloped in the last night, of a large and marked period of that mysterious thing which we

call life; and of which so much is now passing into that which we call death. It is not the future, so much as the past, and that which is growing into the past, that here stands before us, and lays its firm grasp upon our hasting spirits, and with subdued but all the more distinct and audible accent, bids us pause. Time himself, the hoary and swift messenger, seems not only to stop for a moment, but even to return, and fold his wings, and walk by our side, that he may take us earnestly by the hand and discourse face to face, ere he speeds away forever.

Nor does this power of the closing year depend upon the peculiar complexion which the year may have worn to one or another. It may be affected by this peculiarity, but it does not depend upon it. He wrongs it, taking not only a selfish but a superficial view, who gives to this influence a merely personal character. Personal all influence must be, in one sense. Individual we are and human, nor from ourselves are we able, at any season, by any effort, to escape entirely. The past itself is individual to every man. Each of us, each and every one of mankind, has lived his own life. The space we are finishing has been to no two persons the same. To every mind in existence, it has been an individual and separate year. On each path it has