THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.

I SAW her when the flowers of life

Bloom'd in hope's radiant dawn, Fair as the rainbow in the sky,

Ere its tints of heaven are gone. Her heart was pure, no with'ring blight Had crush'd its dreams of youth,Nor weeds of sorrow rankled round Her soul of angel truth.

Her path was studded o'er with gems,
Of pleasure's holiest ray-

No cloud had cross'd her sunny brow
To steal its light away.

No gloomy shade of grief had cast
Its darkness o'er her face,
Nor tear of anguish on her cheek,
Had left its dim, damp trace.

Before her, Fancy's wizard charm
Raised from their bowers of bliss,
Bright visions of a future time,

More glorious even than this.
Around her Virtue's halo shed
Its pale yet peerless beam,
While young Romance stood pensive by,
And bask'd beneath its gleam.

Her form was graceful as the sprite,
Whose home is in a flower,

That pours its balm to elves alone,
At midnight's solemn hour.

Her smile was like the first born tinge

Of gold along the blue,

That magic-like wakes beauty's morn, Bathed in its roseate hue.

She struck her lute, and sung of love,
A sadly plaintive strain,-
'Twas Memory's echo of the past,
That ne'er could come again; -
Her voice was sweet as Music's breath,
Low murmuring on the strings
Of the wild air-harp, ere the wind
Shakes breezes from his wings.

I saw her once again,-but all
Her loveliness was flown—
Her tongue was silent as the tomb
That claim'd her for its own-

The brightness of her glance had fled
As stars flee from the day-

The rose that deck'd her crimson cheek
Was blasted by decay.

The dews of death sate sternly cold
Upon her marble brow-

The snowy bosom heaved no more
'Twas moist and clammy now-
The eye that once, with fond delight,
Shone like the meteor's blaze,
Now sunk and lustreless was fix'd,
A dead and sightless gaze.

The dark hair o'er her forehead fell,

And veil'd its icy chill

Life's sparkling founts were frozen up

The throbbing heart was still—
The shadowy frame of soulless clay,
So beauteous once and blest,

Lay like a sculptured form of stone,
Wrapt in eternal rest.

The fleshless hands were clasp'd across

Her breast as if her soul

Mid worship's seraph breathings flew,
To reach heaven's blissful goal;
About her livid lips still play'd

The last faint smile she gave,

Like moonlight's lingering farewell gleam
Upon a mouldering grave.

I stood beside the shrouded bier,
And kiss'd the lifeless earth,

And wept to think that joys like hers
Should perish at their birth;

'Tis even so!-the greenest bud

In summer's glow will fade,

And hallow'd hopes of years to come,

Are oft the first decay'd.

J. W.

ALLEGORIC VISION.

A FEELING of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take possession of me alike in Spring and in Autumn. But in spring it is the melancholy of Hope; in autumn it is the melancholy of Resignation. As I was journeying on foot through the Apennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the Spring and the Autumn and the Melancholy of both seemed to have combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and the colours of April :

Qual ramicel a ramo,

Tal da pensier pensiero
In lui germogliava.

But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season, in the stately elm, after the clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried withies around its trunk and branches. Even so there was a memory on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still looked-I know not, whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I express that dimness of abstraction which lay on the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes, like the flitting tarnish from the breath of a sigh on a silver mirror! and which accorded with their slow and reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object on the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It was at once the melancholy of hope and of resignation.

We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek protection in the vaulted door-way of a lone chapelry: and we sate face to face each on the stone bench along-side the low, weather-stained wall, and as close as possible to the massy door.

After a pause of silence: Even thus, said he, like two strangers that have fled to the same shelter from the same storm, not seldom do Despair and Hope meet for the first time in the porch of Death! All extremes meet, I answered; but yours was a strange and visionary thought. The better then doth it beseem both the place and me, he replied. From a Visionary wilt thou hear a Vision? Mark that vivid flash through this torrent of rain! Fire and water. Even here thy adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of my

Vision. I entreated him to proceed. Sloping his face toward the arch and yet averting his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words: till listening to the wind that echoed within the hollow edifice, and to the rain without,

Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound,
The clash hard by and the murmur all round,

he gradually sunk away, alike from me and from his own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm, and in the duskiness of that place, he sate like an emblem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner on the sodded grave of an only one-an aged mourner, who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. Starting at length from his brief trance of abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed his discourse, and commenced his parable.

:

During one of those short furloughs from the service of the Body, which the Soul may sometimes obtain even in this, its militant state, I found myself in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing diversity of soils and here was a sunny spot, and there a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and shade, as we have observed on the mountain's side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds are scattered over heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the valley stood a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colours, some horrible tale, or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, untinged by the medium through which it passed. The body of the building was full of people, some of them dancing, in and out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Intermingled with these, I observed a number of men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared, now to marshal the various groups and to direct their movements, and now with menacing countenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same time an immense cage, and the shape of a human Colossus.

I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things might mean; when lo! one of the directors came up to me, and with a stern and reproachful look bade me uncover my head, for that the place into which I had entered was the temple of the only true Religion, in the holier recess of which the great Goddess personally resided.

Himself too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated minister of her rites. Awe-struck by the name of Religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly and earnestly entreated him to conduct me into her presence. He assented. Offerings he took from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations he exorcised me; and then led me through many, a dark and winding alley, the dew damps of which chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my feet mingled, methought, with moanings, affrighted me. At length we entered a large hall, without window, or spiracle, or lamp. The asylum and dormitory it seemed of perennial night-only that the walls were brought to the eye by a number of self-luminous inscriptions in letters of a pale sepulchral light, that held strange neutrality with the darkness, on the verge of which it kept its rayless vigil. I could read them methought; but though each one of the words taken separately I seemed to understand, yet when I took them in sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible. As I stood meditating on these hard sayings, my guide thus addressed me-Read and believe; these are Mysteries!-At the extremity of the vast hall the Goddess was placed. Her features, blended with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet vacant. I prostrated myself before her, and then. retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wondering, and dissatisfied.

As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard a deep buzz as of discontent. A few whose eyes were bright, and either piercing or steady, and whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, ridgelike, above the eyebrows, bespoke observation followed by meditative thought; and a much larger number, who were enraged by the severity and insolence of the priests in exacting their offerings, I had collected in one tumultuous group, and with a confused outcry of "this is the Temple of Superstition!" after much contumely, and turmoil, and cruel mal-treatment on all sides, rushed out of the pile: and I, methought, joined them.

We speeded from the Temple with hasty steps, and had now nearly gone round half the valley, when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond the stature of mortals, and with a something more than human in her countenance and mien, which yet could. by mortals be only felt, not conveyed by words or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection, animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in them: and hope, without its uncertainty, and a something more than all these, which I understood not, but which yet seemed to blend all these into a divine unity of expression. Her garments were white and matronly, and of the simplest texture. We in quired her name. My name, she replied, is Religion.