ough the barns and garners it crackles and streams!
As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,
Rush the flames to the sky
Giant-high;
And at length,
Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!
With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,
And submits to his doom!
Desolate
The place, and dread
For storms the barren bed.
In the blank voids that cheerful casements were,
Comes to and fro the melancholy air,
And sits despair;
And through the ruin, blackening in its shroud
Peers, as it flits, the melancholy cloud.

One human glance of grief upon the grave
Of all that fortune gave
The loiterer takes--then turns him to depart,
And grasps the wanderer's staff and mans his heart
Whatever else the element bereaves
One blessing more than all it reft--it leaves,
The faces that he loves!--He counts them o'er,
See--not one look is missing from that store!

Now clasped the bell within the clay--
The mould the mingled metals fill--
Oh, may it, sparkling into day,
Reward the labor and the skill!
Alas! should it fail,
For the mould may be frail--
And still with our hope must be mingled the fear--
And, ev'n now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!
To the dark womb of sacred earth
This labor of our hands is given,
As seeds that wait the second birth,
And turn to blessings watched by heaven!
Ah, seeds, how dearer far than they,
We bury in the dismal tomb,
Where hope and sorrow bend to pray
That suns beyond the realm of day
May warm them into bloom!

From the steeple
Tolls the bell,
Deep and heavy,
The death-knell!
Guiding with dirge-note--solemn, sad, and slow,
To the last home earth's weary wanderers know.
It is that worshipped wife--
It is that faithful mother! [46]
Whom the dark prince of shadows leads benighted,
From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted
Far from those blithe companions, born
Of her, and blooming in their morn;
On whom, when couched her heart above,
So often looked the mother-love!

Ah! rent the sweet home's union-band,
And never, never more to come--
She dwells within the shadowy land,
Who was the mother of that home!
How oft they miss that tender guide,
The care--the watch--the face--the mother--
And where she sate the