d in the gentle gale,
Darling Minnie! I see her yet.
She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands,
And fearlessly entered the phantom bark;
We felt it glide from the silver sands,
And all our sunshine grew strangely dark;
We know she is safe on the farther side,
Where all the ransomed and angels be:
Over the river, the mystic river,
My childhood's idol is waiting for me.

For none returns from those quiet shores,
Who cross with the boatman cold and pale;
We hear the dip of the golden oars,
And catch a gleam of the snowy sail;
And lo! they have passed from our yearning hearts,
They cross the stream and are gone for aye.
We may not sunder the veil apart
That hides from our vision the gates of day;
We only know that their barks no more
May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea;
Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore,
They watch, and beckon, and wait for me.

And I sit and think, when the sunset's gold
Is flushing river and hill and shore,
I shall one day stand by the water cold,
And list for the sound of the boatman's oar;
I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail,
I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand,
I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale,
To the better shore of the spirit land.
I shall know the loved who have gone before,
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
The angel of death shall carry me.

NANCY WOODBURY PRIEST.

GRIEF FOR THE DEAD.

O hearts that never cease to yearn!
O brimming tears that ne'er are dried!
The dead, though they depart, return
As though they had not died!

The living are the only dead;
The dead live,--nevermore to die;
And often, when we mourn them fled,
They never were so nigh!

And though they lie beneath the waves,
Or sleep within the churchyard dim,
(Ah! through how many different graves
God's children go to him!)--

Yet every grave gives up its dead
Ere it is overgrown with grass;
Then why should hopeless tears be shed,
Or need we cry, "Alas"?

Or why should Memory, veiled with gloom,
And like a sorrowing mourner craped,
Sit weeping o'er an empty tomb,
Whose captives have escaped?

'Tis but a mound,--and will be mossed
Whene'er the summer grass appears;
The loved, though wept, are never lost;
We only lose--our tears!

Nay, Hope may whisper with the dead
By bending forward where they are;
But Memory, with a backward tread,
Commun