My hopes are plumed with the wings of doves;

And away from earthly things,
In the amaranth visions of early loves
Find rest for their weary wings.
O phoenix hopes, such rest ye found
When ye rose from a heart of flame
To a heaven of Love, to gather around
Our simple sylvan name.

Mabel,

dream of the years that fell,That fell by the reaper, Time;

It was here in the affluent harvest-dell,
When my youth was in its prime, —
It was down in the harvest pride, unshorn,
We stood with the reaper bands;

And love to our hearts was thrillingly borne
In the tremulous clasp of our hands.

The golden radiance lent your face
The hyacinth hue of the grain,

And, flushing your cheeks with a maidenly grace,
Bloom-roses there were lain.

And love saw mysteries in your eyes,

Twin stars in the mellow morn,

--

And dreamed in your red lips' parted dyes

Of pearls amid the corn.

So the sweet vision of gentle Ruth

Is annalled in orient lore,

When the Syrian nobleman gave his Youth

To her Beauty for evermore.

And I was the Lord of the lands, from whence,
In the autumn's amber pride,

Your virginal beauty and innocence

Was borne a wedded bride.

That night there was joy in the gabled manse, When home were the harvest wains,

The young and the beautiful met in the dance,
To the bounding music's strains;

And the trusting love in Mabel's eyes,
In their clear and holy shine,

Was the love, -oh! spirit in Paradise,
When last they looked in mine.

Thou hast gathered home to thy garner, God,
The sheaves of my golden years;

But thou leavest hope in the sepulchre clod,
And smiles in a world of tears:

The pines are green immortalities,

When the elder-blossoms die,

And the passion that sinks with the sunset, sees Sweet peace in the star-sown sky.

Softly the wings of the autumn sing
Their choral song of praise,

And a prophecy thus to my soul they bring

Of its slowly parting days,

Of the sleep that shall coldly and gently glide

On my eyes from a chilly hand, —

Of the dawn, with Mabel by my side,
In the calm of another land.

THE GRAVE OF GENIUS.

BY LONGFELLOW.

Ir has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in advance of their age; which is true. There is something equally true, yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age. As the German prose-poet says, every possible future is behind them. We cannot suppose, that a period of time will ever come, when the world, or any considerable portion of it, shall have come up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.

And oh! how majestically they walk in history; some like the sun, with all his travelling glories round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven-listed colors, as from the trail of pencils!

And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,not all happy, in the outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with wonder

M

upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much; and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death, and the world talks of them, while they sleep!

It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanctified them! As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon their souls! And as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life-eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and forever!

THE LOVED AND LOST.

BY MRS. MARY NOEL M'DONALD.

COME to my heart again, ye long departed,
Come, fill the vacant places at our hearth:
Vainly for you the bitter tears have started,
Since ye forsook for heaven the haunts of earth.
Vainly, ye lost, we yearn for your caressing,

And ask the tender tones which once we heard;
On the still air there comes no whispered blessing;
Mute is each lip, and lost each loving word.

Come once again, there is a shadow o'er us;
Earth seems a weary land, since ye are gone:
Dim is the lengthened pathway spread before us,
And distant far the goal which we have won;
Vainly, the spring-time, in its bloom returning,
Wakes the young buds, and clothes the earth anew;
Unto our hearts, with quenchless love still burning,
What, what avails its beauty, 'reft of you!

Thou, the dear friend of girlhood, memory traces
Full many an hour of gladness linked with thee,
And in thy children's fair and gentle faces,

Some loved resemblance of thyself may see.
Thou, the kind guardian of my childhood's hours,
My guide in youth, thine absence I deplore;
See the dark cloud that on her pathway lowers,

Come to thy child, and be her shield once more.

And thou, the best and dearest, words can never
Speak the keen anguish of my stricken breast;
'T was but our summer day, how soon to sever
The sacred bond which made our life so blest.
The past, the past, 't is robed in hues of brightness,
Its records tell of years how full of bliss,
When my young spirit in its joy and lightness,
Dreamed not of such fearful woe as this.

Dost thou still love me, in that far-off heaven?
Or art thou near me, on thy spirit wings?
Beloved, beloved, I cannot deem it riven,

That holy tie to which my heart yet clings:
Hast thou not seen the tears, which, like a river,
Swelled to the flood-gates of my breaking heart?
Oh, say not thou art lost to me forever,

We have been linked too fondly thus to part.