WINTER.

Is this the world that lately bloomed so bright? Where are the laughing flowers, that starred the

earth,

Like jewels on the garments of a bride?

Where are the plumy choristers, that poured

Their songs from every spray? And where the brook,

That warbled wildly near our cottage door?

The dewy flowers shall breathe and bloom no more;
For Winter's icy wind hath o'er them passed.
In hollow trees, and under frosted eaves,
The cheerless birds lament the dying year,
Or speed to welcome Spring in other climes.
The happy brook is frozen in the act

Of singing God's own praise; e'en as a lark,
Hymning, exultant, at the gates of heaven,
Is stricken by the rabid, ruthless hawk,
And dies with music trembling in its throat.
The fleecy wealth of Winter from the skies

I

Pours, ceaseless, down, till every field is wrapt
In weeds of woe; till every tree is hung

With feathery tapestry more white than wool;
And mighty mantles, wrought by God's own hand,
Are flung in silence round the giant-hills.

And see! yon northern Ben, like Peter's dome,
Towering supreme above the Roman roofs,
Rears o'er the clustering heights his snowy form,

A dome of silver in a heaven of blue!

So comes the Winter of our earthly years,
When Hope's gay blossoms wither, and are gone!
When Joy's sweet songs give way to sorrow's wail—

And when the winding-sheet of mortal woe

Is drawn by viewless fingers over all.

But courage! courage! thou undying soul!
Image of One who knows no end of days!

An endless Spring, with flowers of deathless bloom,
And songs of heavenly bliss, are thine beyond the

tomb!

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE.

I STOOD within a dungeon grey and old;
Its walls were written o'er with legends sad,
Graven by hands long mouldered into dust-
The hands of those who laid life's fetters down,
And fled the prison of this house of clay.

Some lines breathed nought save fretfulness and pain;
Some flung defiance through that sunless cell;
Some moaned in sorrow; and a noble few

Uttered the confidence of holy hope.

The World, methought, is somewhat like that place,
A house of bondage unto many a soul.
Some feeble spirits only weep and pine;
Some, like the gnarled oak amid the storm,
Roughly resist, and battle with their lot;

Some, crushed beneath a mountain-weight of woe,
Still look to Heaven, their faces bright with faith;
Hoping that, when life's prison-gloom is o'er,

Their souls to endless liberty will soar.

THE WRECK-GATHERER.

LONG had the wintry tempest vexed the deep,

But now the winds are resting from their toil; The weary waves have rocked themselves to sleep, And, like tired reapers, lie beside the spoil. What moveth yonder 'mid the signs of storm? Much like themselves, an aged human form.

With bending frame, and ill-supported tread,
The lonely creature culls the drifted wreck,
By wind and wave among the sea-weed spread,
Once tapering spar, or well-cemented deck,
But stranded now upon the friendless shore,
Their mission done, their latest voyage o'er.

Poor mortal wreck! thine emblem greets thee here,
Nor thee alone, but thousands of thy kind,
Who battle vainly, many a changeful year,

On Time's wide ocean, till some ruder wind

Casts their frail wrecks on bleak misfortune's strand, Where DEATH steals on with greedy, grasping hand.

THE SABBATH-BELL.

'Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become

new.'

SCENE-Banks of an American river.

Time-Sunset.

Stranger and an old native conversing. Smoke of a large city rising at a short distance.

STRANGER.

HARK! to the deep and solemn knell,

Sounding o'er forest-land and fell;

O'er river and savannah vast,

Where, free and fearless as the blast,
The kings of nature, unsubdued,
Reign 'mid primeval solitude.

"Tis louder than the vesper-hymn,

Chanted by boatmen as they skim

The brightly-sparkling waters,

Where nature sheds her sunniest smiles

6

Over the Thousand' fairy Isles,"

Old ocean's fairest daughters!

'The Islands of the St Lawrence.