yet the tree to earth is cast,
The sapling falls before the blast;
Life's ashes keep their covered fires,--
Its flame expires.

Struck by the noiseless, viewless foe,
Whose deadlier breath than shot or shell
Has laid the best and bravest low,
His boy, all bright in morning's glow,
That high-souled youth he loved so well,
Untimely fell.

Yet still he wore his placid smile,
And, trustful in the cheering creed
That strives all sorrow to beguile,
Walked calmly on his way awhile:
Ah, breast that leans on breaking reed
Must ever bleed!

So they both left us, sire and son,
With opening leaf, with laden bough:
The youth whose race was just begun,
The wearied man whose course was run,
Its record written on his brow,
Are brothers now.

Brothers!--the music of the sound
Breathes softly through my closing strain;
The floor we tread is holy ground,
Those gentle spirits hovering round,
While our fair circle joins again
Its broken chain.

MAY 25th, 1864.

MEYERBEER.

"Thou knowest not the day nor the hour." Scarcely two years ago the
great composer, whose recent death involves so irreparable a loss to the
world of musical art, was accosted, while in a Paris coffee-house, by a
friend recently arrived from Berlin.

"What do they say of me there?" asked Meyerbeer, after the first
salutations.

"They say, with regret, that you are just now as reticent as Rossini."

"Indeed!"

"Yet, after all, they add that you are busier than Rossini, for he is
doing nothing, and you, at least, have an opera in your portfolio."

"Ah! I see you are hinting about the 'Africaine'."

"Yes, I refer to the 'Africaine'."

"Bah! bah! The Parisians are in a great hurry about it. I am not dead
yet, and some fine day I will astonish them in a way they will
remember."

Providence decreed that this harmless boast, this careless prediction,
should come to nought. While he was yet working on the "Africaine", the
hand of death interposed, and, at the cold touch, the pen was laid
aside, the music-paper dropped unheeded on the floor, the piano was
silent, and the composer left forever the scene of his labors and his
triumphs. Few men might, at the last hour, be more justified in
pleading, with earnest anxiety,--"Not now!--not now!"

Biographers already differ a