ose sweetly sacred tones are hushed forever-more;
The smile that lingered round its path when other lights had fled,
Oh! can it be that blessed smile is buried with the dead?
Then what is left the orphan heart thus mournfully bereft?
To call its crushed affections home and count the treasures left,
With trembling fear to count them o'er, and bitterly to sigh,
Remembering they are earthly too,--they, too, alas, must die.

Perchance of its remaining joys, its fondly garnered things,
One may be dearer than the rest--to that it fondly clings;
And, resting thus confidingly, it half forgets the woe
Which changed the orphan's joyous tones to cadence sad and low.
And can the stern destroyer find naught else to call his own
That he has stamped his fearful mark upon this chosen one?
It boots not to inquire the cause, the why it must be so;
"It is his victim," this alone is pain enough to know.
What's left thee now, poor orphan heart, that entered life so gay,
And fondly dreamed 'twould all have proved a bright and cloudless way?
Where are the joys that wreathed thee round in childhood's reckless hours?
'Twas thine to watch them droop and fall, like pale, decaying flowers.
Where is thy home of love? Ah! well, that thought may cloud thy brow--
The dear loved home that sheltered thee is claimed by strangers now;
And does that echoing hall repeat no well-remembered tone?
The stranger's voice, the stranger's step have there familiar grown.

And where the joyous faces now that circled round the hearth?
Gone. Are all gone? Then changed indeed, fearfully changed, is earth!
Alas! poor desolated heart, what more remains for thee?
(A sad and solitary wreck on life's tempestuous sea)--
What but to feel, destroying Time, indeed, has roughly past
And blighted fairest dreams of bliss, oh! too, too fair to last;
What but to muse on perished joys to which sad memory clings,
While pleasure's wrecked and ruined hopes, a mournful band, she brings,
Death's trophies, which proclaim his shaft at treasured bliss he threw,
And oh! which mournfully disclose his fearful victory too.

Yes, this is life! but life it is without that heavenly ray
Which ever throws its purest light upon the stormiest way;
Which sweetly gilds the darkest sky and comes like angel voice,
(E'en 'mid the wreck of dearest hopes), to bid the heart rejoice;
Which flings a smile on sorrow's brow, and sunshine o