cannot throw
Shadows its sweet glory o'er!

Gentle thoughts of all the past;
Happy thoughts of all to come;
Loving thoughts, like rose-leaves, cast
Over all around her home.

Oh, the light upon that brow;
Oh, the love within that eye!
Oh, the pleasant dreams that flow
Like fairy music sweetly by!

Morn of Hope! Oh may its light
Melt but into brighter day!
Lady, all that's blest and bright
Be about thy path alway!

HOME.

BY MRS. H. MARION WARD.

"_Home, sweet home!"_ How many holy and beautiful memories are crowded
into those three little words. How does the absent one, when weary
with the cold world's strife, return, like the dove of the deluge, to
that bright spot amid the troubled waters of life. "_Home, sweet
home!_" The one household plant that blooms on and on, amid the
withering heart-flowers, that brightens up amidst tempests and storms,
and gives its sweetest fragrance when all else is gloom and
desolation. We never know how deeply its roots are entwined with our
heart-strings, till bitter lessons of wasted affection have taught us
to appreciate that love which remains the same through years of
estrangement. What exile from the spot of his birth but remembers,
perhaps with bitterness, the time when falsehood and deceit first
broke up the beautiful dreams of his soul, when he learned to _see_
the world in its true colors. How his heart ached for his father's
look of kindness--his mother's voice of sympathy--a sister's or
brother's hand to clasp in the warm embrace of kindred affection.
Poor, home-sick wanderer! I can feel for your loneliness; for my heart
often weeps tears of bitterness over the memories of a far-off home,
and in sympathy with a gray-haired father, who, when he calls his
little band around the hearth-stone, misses full many a link in the
chain of social affection. I can feel for your loneliness, for perhaps
you have a father, too, whose eyes have grown dim by long looking into
the tomb of love. Perhaps you, too, have a mother, sleeping in some
distant grave-yard, beneath the flowers your hands have planted; and
as life's path grows still more rugged before you, you wonder, as I
have done, when your time will come to lie down and sleep quietly with
_her_. An incident occurred on board of one of the western steamers,
some years since, which strongly impressed me with its truthfulness in
proving how wildly the h