ther who is sleeping low
Beneath the stormy sea.

And while to-night the curfew bell
Rang out with solemn chime,
As soundeth o'er the buried year,
The organ peal of time,

And, near the fragrant jessamine,
I mused in garden glade,
A phantom form appeared to me
Beneath the hawthorn shade.

The dews had wept their silent tears,
The moon was up on high,
And every star was sphered with calm,
Like an archangel's eye;

And melancholy music swept
With cadence low and sweet,
Such as ascends when spirit-wings
Around a death-bed meet.

O was it not a mother's heart
That gave that warning sign;
The loving heart that used to thrill
To every grief of mine?

I oft have deemed, in sunny hours,
When life with love was fraught,
The nearness of the dead to us
A fantasy of thought.

But, standing on the barrier
I used to view with pain,
I feel the chains of severed love
Are linking close again.

Another hand must smooth and bless
My father's silver hair;
Another voice must read to him
At morn and evening prayer.

The flowers that I have trained will bloom,
But at another's side;
And he I love will seek perchance,
A gentler, fairer bride.

And soon another shade will haunt
The echo and the gloom,
With pining heart of restless love,
And omens of the tomb.

Then set the festal board aside,
And bear the harp away;
The coronach must sound instead
From solemn kirk-yard gray.

TO MY SISTER.

ON HER BIRTHDAY.

'T is said that each succeeding year
Another circlet weaves
Within each living, waving tree;
Yet not in buds or leaves,--
But far within the silent core,
The tiny shuttles ply,
At Nature's ever-working loom,
Unseen by human eye.

And thus, within my "heart of hearts,"
Doth this returning day,
Another golden zone complete,
Another circle lay;
And when unto the shadowy past
In retrospect I flee,
I numerate the fleeting years
By deepening love for thee.

Since last we met this sunny day
How bright the hours have flown!
Youth, Love, and Hope, with fadeless light,
Around our way have shone;
An