THE PARTING.

BY T. K. HERVEY.

THE night is lowering, dull and dark,
He holds her to his heavy heart;
Her eye is on the fatal bark,-
And must they must they part!

Oh! that a wish could chain the gales,
How long that dreary calm should last,
Or ere a breath should swell the sails,

That flap around the mast!

Oh! that no ray might ever rise,

To light her latest sacrifice!

There are they met-the young and fond-

That such should ever meet to part!

One hour is theirs, and all beyond

A chaos of the heart:

She hears him yet-his softest sigh

The breathing of his lowest word-
Sounds that, by her, beneath the sky,

Shall never more be heard;

Form, voice, that hour-all, save its sorrow

Shall be but memories on the morrow!

He is her all who bends above,

Her hope-the brightest, and the last ;

Oh! that the days life gives to love
Should ever be the past!

What gleam upon their startled eyes

Breaks, like the flash from angry heaven ?
Lo, where the clouds, in yonder skies,
Before the gale are driven !

And, o'er their spirits, all grows night,
Beneath that burst of life and light.

The moon is forth,-but sad and pale,
As though she wept, and waited, still,
For him she never more shall hail,
Upon the Latmos hill :

The breeze is up,-the sail unfurled
Oh! for one hour of respite, yet!
In vain !-'Tis moonlight in the world,
But Ellen's light is set;

The bark is tossing in the bay,

The streamers point away-away!

One kiss of lips as wan and cold

As life to them shall, henceforth, be;

One glance--the glance that makes us old,

Of utter agony;

One throb--the bitterest and the last,
Awaking, but to deaden, pain,

In hearts that, when that pang is past,

Shall never ache again ;

And the loosed cord,-the broken bowl,

Lie at hope's fountain, in the soul.