or unknown;
Of joys, deemed fadeless, gone to swift decay,
And love's broad circle dwindled half away;
Of early graves of friends who, one by one,
Leave us at last to journey on alone.

Turn to the home of childhood--hallowed spot,
Through life's vicissitudes still unforgot;
The sacred hearth deserted now is found,
Or unloved stranger-forms are circling round.
In the dear hall, whose sounds were all our own,
Are other voices, other accents known;
And where our early friends? A starting tear
And the rude headstone promptly answer, "Here."

Thus will compare Hope's sketch of bliss to be
With the undreamed of, sad reality;
Yet this and more the afflicted heart may bear,
If Faith, celestial visitant, be there,
Whispering of greener shores, of purer skies,
Of flowers unfading, love that never dies,
A glimpse of joy to come in mercy given,
The eternal sunshine of approving Heaven.

1818. E. P. K.

ON READING "GIBBON'S ROME."

And this man was "an infidel!" Ah, no!
The tale's incredible--it was not so.
The untutored savage through the world may plod,
Reckless of Heaven and ignorant of his God;
But that a mind that's culled improvement's flowers
From all her brightest amaranthine bowers,
A mind whose keen and comprehensive glance
Comprised at once a world--should worship chance,
Is strangely inconsistent--seems to me
The very essence of absurdity;
Who, from the exhaustless granary of Heaven,
Receives the blessings so profusely given,
Looks with a curious eye on Nature's face,
Forever beaming with a new-born grace,
And dares with impious voice aloud proclaim
He knows no Heaven but this--no God but Fame.
Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee,
Vain man denies his own reality;
But tho' the boon of _life_ he may receive
From God, and still affect to disbelieve,
What are his views at _death's_ resounding knell?
Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er _died_ an infidel.
Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain,
All human aid inefficacious, vain,
Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where?
The past, all gloom! the future, all despair!
'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic turns to Thee,
Then the proud scoffer humbly bends the knee;
Feels in this darksome hour there's much to do--
Earth fading fast, Heaven's portals far from view.
Oh, what a hopeless wretch this man m