rose-bush that I set
About the parlour-window and the box of mignonette.

The poor girl's prayer to 'live to see the snow-drop,' in the spring-time,
is answered. The violets have come forth, and in the fields around she
hears the bleating of the young lambs. She is now ready to die, and knows
that the time of her departure is at hand, for she has had a 'warning from
heaven.' The reader should have sat by the bed-side of one slowly fading
away by consumption, and have heard the wild March wind wail amidst the
boughs of leafless trees without, rightly to appreciate the faithfulness
of these lines:

'I did not hear the dog howl, mother, nor hear the death-watch beat,
There came a sweeter token when the night and morning meet:
But sit beside my bed, mother, and put your hand in mine,
And Effie on the other side, and I will tell the sign.

All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call;
It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all;
The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,
And in the wild March-morning I heard them call my soul.

For lying broad awake I thought of you and Effie dear;
I saw you sitting in the house, and I no longer here;
With all my strength I pray'd for both, and so I felt resign'd,
And up the valley came a swell of music on the wind.

I thought that it was fancy, and I listen'd in my bed,
And then did something speak to me--I know not what was said;
For great delight and shuddering took hold of all my mind,
And up the valley came again the music on the wind.

But you were sleeping; and I said, 'It's not for them: it's mine.'
And if it comes three times, I thought, I take it for a sign.
And once again it came, and close beside the window-bars,
Then seem'd to go right up to Heaven and die among the stars.'

'This blessed music,' she says, 'went that way my soul will have to go.'
She is reconciled to her inevitable fate; yet still she casts a 'longing,
lingering look behind,' to the beautiful world she is leaving forever. Her
reflections are imbued with a deep pathos; the second line of the first
stanza, especially, 'teems with sensation:'

'O look! the sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a glow;
He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I know:
And there I move no longer now, and there his light may shine,
Wild flowers are in the valley for other hands than mine!

O sweet and strange it seems to me, t