Dost thou a brother's fate declare,

Or for a sister call the tear?
Or for a friend departed, tell
Thy solemn truths, funereal bell!

Ah! I have felt thy freezing power,
In silent sorrow's darkest hour;
The slowly pacing, nodding hearse,
Has been the comment on my verse.

In each department have I found
(When oft I heard thy solemn sound)

The heart's true pang-and felt thy knell,
Thou mournful deep funereal bell !

Ah! what dost thou to mortals cry? "Ye thoughtless race, prepare to die! "And bid each earthly joy farewell, "Warn'd by the frequent passing bell."

And oft as with the dawning day
I hear thy melancholy lay,
Upon the rising breezes swell

I'll hail thee, warning passing bell!

For sure thou tell'st my life's short date
Must sink beneath the hand of fate;
And soon thou'lt toll my lingering knell,
Thou moral, pealing, passing bell.

Stanzas

On revisiting my Native Town, in August, 1837.

SOME

years have I wander'd o'er uplands and valleys, Where nature looks barren, or fertile and chaste; Where Neptune indulges his maritime sallies

Rebounds on the mountain or howls in the waste: But no ocean, no harbour, no villa on earth, Seems so lovely as Dereham, the place of my birth!

Enraptured, I saw Sol rise from yon billow,*

Or view'd from the Cader† his bright dawning ray; Then saw him recline on his blue western pillow,+

And silently leave the last shadows of day:

But no mountain or valley, no prospect on earth Was so pleasing as Dereham, the town of my birth:

Tho' the beauties of Cambria, awful and charming,
Plinlimmon and Snowdon with grandeur delight!
Tho' the cataract bellows in accents alarming!
As objects sublime strike the fugitive's sight!

* The German Ocean.

+ Cader Idris, in Merionethshire. The Irish Sea.

No torrent, no vista, no garden on earth
Arrests me like Dereham, sweet vale of my birth.

The pleasures of home, ever new and delighting,
Embosom each passion and cherish the man;
And the volatile world with its scenes so inviting,
Charms not like the grot where our reason began;
No voyage or tour for science or truth,
Can chase from life's vision the rambles of youth.

But why so enchanting ye meadows and flowers,

Where Friendship and Love in simplicity smiled; Here's the Green and the Sandhill where fled my first hours;

Still as beauteous as ever, as rural and wild— How sacred's yon cot! and yon sepulchre'd earth, 'Tis the dust of my fathers-the land of my birth.

My fathers! ye records of life's revelation!

Of patriarchs, prophets, and christians renown'd, Reveal to my faith by your sacred narration,

The Jordan they've past, and the Canaan they've

found,

For there shall my soul disembodied arise,

And my fathers rejoin in their own native skies.

T. E. ABBOTT.

1

Withered Leaves.

"We all do fade as a leaf."-ISAIAH.

"So flourishes and fades, majestic man."-BEATTIE.

OH tell me not that Beauty's power
Shall live in undecaying bloom;

'Tis but the triumph of an hour,

For time, or sickness, to the tomb

Consign it-and no traces last
To tell us where the meteor past.

Oh say not when the breathing Spring
Has ceas'd to waft her balms around;
Or Summer's lovely flowers to fling
Their fragrant beauties on the ground,
That nature's charms no longer shine
In splendour only not divine.

For when her brilliant train are flown,
And in their sweet successions past;
When Autumn's nect'rous hand has thrown,
Of all her treasur'd stores, the last-

Her fading trees incessant pour

Their wither'd leaves-a bounteous shower!

The splendid tints there seem display'd
Ambitious of the Rainbow's dye;
Their mingling hues, shade after shade
What human pencil can supply?

No

tho' they're wither'd leaves, they stand

As proofs of an almighty hand.

Altho' no more their mazy veins
Unseen the vital streams convey;
Enough of beauty yet remains,

In form and tint, to mark the day
When in their loftiest pride displayed,
They form'd a cool umbrageous shade.

Emblems of feeble man!-like you
All beautiful and bright in youth-
In manhood flourishing to view,

Till age unlovely tells the truth
That man's a fading flower, and must
Descend, and mingle with the dust!

Your day is set to rise no more!
But man, immortal man shall rise,
And in this world display the power

Of him who fills both earth and skiesYes! ev'n this faded form shall live again, "Bright thro' th' eternal year of love's triumphant reign."

MRS. R. MILLER.