LADY CAMPBELL.

GENTLY supported by the ready aid
Of loving hands, whose little work of toil
Her grateful prodigality repaid

With all the benediction of her smile,

She turned her failing feet

To the soft-pillowed seat,

Dispensing kindly greetings all the while.

Before the tranquil beauty of her face
I bowed in spirit, thinking that she were
A suffe'ring Angel, whom the special grace
Of God entrusted to our pious care,
That we might learn from her
The art to minister

To heavenly beings in seraphic air.

There seemed to lie a weight upon her brain, That ever pressed her blue-veined eyelids down, But could not dim her lustrous eyes with pain, Nor seam her forehead with the faintest frown: She was as she were proud,

So young, to be allowed

To follow Him who wore the thorny crown.

Nor was she sad, but over every mood,
To which her lightly-pliant mind gave birth,
Gracefully changing, did a spirit brood,
Of quiet gaiety, and serenest mirth ;

And thus her voice did flow,

So beautifully low,

A stream whose music was no thing of earth.

Now long that instrument has ceased to sound,
Now long that gracious form in earth has lain
Tended by nature only, and unwound

Are all those mingled threads of Love and Pain ;
So let me weep and bend

My head and wait the end,

Knowing that God creates not thus in vain.

GEORGE VERNON COLEBROKE.

THOU too art gone, and yet I hardly know
Why thou didst care to go:

Thou wert so well at heart, so spirit-clear,
So heavenly-calm, though here;

But thus it is; and, it would seem, no more
Can we, who on the shore

Of the loud world still walk, escape the din,
And lie awhile within

The quiet sunlight of thy filmless mind

And rise refreshed, refined;

Yet am I mild and tempered in my grief,

Having a sure relief ;

For these dear hours on life's dull length were sprent,

By rarest accident,

And now I have thee by me when I will,

Hear thy wise words, and fill

My soul with thy calm looks; now I can tame

Ill thoughts by thy mere name.

Death, the Divorcer, has united us

With bands impervious

To any tooth of Time, for they are wove
Of the same texture as an Angel's Love.

FEBRUARY 23, 1835.

ARTHUR AND ELLEN HALLAM.

A BROTHER and a Sister,-these two Friends,
Cast by fond Nature in one common mould,
And waited on by genial circumstance

In all their history of familiar love,

After a parting of not quite four years,
Are peacefully united here once more.

He first, as best beseemed the manly mind, Tried the dark walk, which has (or seems to have) No portion in the pleasant sun or stars,

The breath of flowers or morning-song of birds,
The hand of Friendship or the lips of Love.
Whether her sad and separated soul

Received some token from that secret place,
That she might follow him and meet him there,
Or whether God, displeased that anything
Of good or evil should so long divide
Such undefiled and sacred sympathies,
Has made them one again before his face,
Are things that we perhaps shall never know.

Say not, O world of short and broken sight! That these died young: the bee and butterfly Live longer in one active sunny hour

Than the poor tortoise in his torpid years:

The lofty flights of Thought through clear and cloud,— The labyrinthine ways that Poesy

Leads her beloved, the weary traverses

Of Reason, and the haven of calm Faith,

All had been theirs ; their seamless brows had known
The seal of pain, the sacrament of tears;

And, unless Pride and Passion and bold Sin
Are all the rule and reckoning of our Being,
They have fulfilled as large a task of life
As ever vete'ran on the mortal field.

Thus they who gave these favoured creatures birth
Deem it no hard infraction of the law
Which regulates the order of our race,

That they above their offspring raise the tomb,
And with parental piety discharge

The duties filial love delights to pay:

They read the perfect sense of the design

In that which seems exception, and they mourn,
Not that these dear ones are already gone,

But that they linger still so far behind.

TO A MOURNER.

SLEEP not-you whose hope is dust,

Love-deserted man!

Or, if feeble body must,

Seldom as it can.

H

Sleep is kin to Death, they tell,-
You for this might love it well,
But it is a kinsman poor,
Hardly gets beyond the door,—
Never fairly dwells within

Where they rest and weep not
Who are safe from Pain and Sin;
Sleep not, Mourner, sleep not.

Mise'ry spent revives in Sleep,
Will has no resistance,
Anguish delves abysses deep
In that dream-existence.
Then we wake and half-believe,
That we may ourselves deceive,

That the loss our souls deplore
May be but a dream the more ;-
Till, at one sharp start, we know,
Though we shriek and weep not,
Our reality of woe,—

Therefore, brother, sleep not!

But let Sleep some wayward change
Bring upon our being,

Let sweet fancies freely range
With calm thoughts agreeing:
Let sad memory be abused
By the pleasure circumfused,
And dear forms no more below
Softly round us come and go;
Or let time be buried quite,

And the moments creep not,-
Though oblivion be delight,

Still, poor mourner, sleep not!