"In the hours of my slumber proud visions come o'er me, "But, ah! from those dreams soon and sadly I waken, "Oh death! thou stern foe to the land blooming, STANZAS. "T IS sweet to think of days gone by, To think of joys that long have fled, To think of friends we fondly loved, Oh! well such moments can repay, For lingering hours of darker thought, The following lines were suggested by reading a narrative of a Chinese youth, whose mother felt great alarm during the prevalence of a thunderstorm, and whose filial affection always prompted him to be present with his mother on such occasions, and even after her death to visit and remain at her grave, during their continuance. I COME to thee, my mother! the black sky Its fiercest terrors, mother, that my arm May wind its shield of love around thy sleeping form. What uproar! raging winds, and smiting hail, The lightning's blaze, and deaf'ning thunder's crash, Let loose at once for havoc ! I should quail Before the terrors of the forked flash, Did not the thought of thee triumphant dash All selfish fears aside, and bid me fly To kneel beside thy grave; the rain-drops plash Heavily round thee from the rifted sky; Yet I am here, fear not-beside thy couch I lie. Thou canst not hear me -the storm brings not now, Oh! mother, mother, how could love like thine The glances of maternal love will shine, And still on other hearts the blessing lies, Around their spirits gather many ties Of joy and tenderness-but all to me That made the earth seem bright, is sepulchred with thee. They sometimes strive to lead me to the halls, Where wine and mirth the fleeting moments wing, But on my clouded spirit sadness falls, More darkly then, than when the cave-glooms fling Their shadows round me, and the night-winds sing Through the torn rocks their melancholy dirge, Or when as now the echoing thunder rings O'er the wide heavens, and the mad gales urge Unto an answering cry, the overmastering surge. The storms of nature pass, and soon no trace The deep-cut channel of our burning tears, Of moonlight through the broken clouds appears, TO A CROCUS. AN' so ye've oped your leaves at last- Puir bonnie thing, Ye dared too soon the moody blast, This damp cauld spring. Ye've lifted up your gou'den head, Then left ye, ere your leaves could spread, Sic' is the hapless doom of those Round whom her chain stern slavery throws, Wha, born to naught but wrongs and woes, An' mony a tear, Find storms and gloom around them close, In life's young year. But o'er ye now the brightening sky A safter breeze your buds will dry, An' fan your bloom; O'er them oppression's clouds still lie In murky gloom. Yet e'en for them, a feeble light Seems breaking o'er the horizon's night, Distant, and faint, yet palely bright, Wi' hope's blest beam, Telling that soon across their sight 'T will broadly gleam. TRUE FRIENDSHIP. THEY say this world is fraught with guile They say that those beloved for years, Believe it not-oh no! oh no! True hearts there are, that love not so, There may be some, perchance, whose eye Yet think not all are false and fair! A SKETCH. [Extracted from a manuscript poem.] YOUNG Harwald's burning coal-black eye, So wan, so sunken, and so pale,— Of silent suffering and decay, |