By an unseen, living Hand, and conscious chords -The dying hear it; and as sounds of earth THE LITTLE BEACH-BIRD. THOU little bird, thou dweller by the sea, O'er the waves dost thou fly? O rather, bird, with me Through the fair land rejoice! Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, As if thy mates had shared The doom of us : Thy wail What does it bring to me? Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, Restless and sad as if, in strange accord With the motion and the roar Of waves that drive to shore, One spirit did ye urge— The Mystery-the Word. Of thousands, thou both sepulchre and pall, A tale of mourning tells Tells of man's wo and fall, His sinless glory fled. Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring Come, quit with me the shore, For gladness and the light Where birds of summer sing. WILLIAM KNOX. WILLIAM KNOX, the author of "Songs of Israel," and "The Harp of Sion," was born in humble life in Roxburgshire, in 1789, and died in Edinburgh in 1825. Some of his pieces evince fancy and feeling, and a fine command of poetical language. MORTALITY. Он, why should the spirit of mortal be proud! The leaves of the oak and the willows shall fade, And the young and the old, and the low and the high, The child whom a mother attended and loved, The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, The hand of the king who the sceptre hath borne, The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep, The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, So the multitude goes-like the flower and the weed So the multitude comes-even those we behold, For we are the same things that our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run. The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think, From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink, To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling, They loved-but their story we cannot unfold, They died-ay, they died! and we things that are now, Yea; hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain, 'Tis the twink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, OH! Youth is like the springtide morn, Through all Judea's echoing land! That spread their blossoms to the day; But Age is like the winter's night, When Hermon wears his mantle cloud, When the dejected pilgrim strays Forsaken by each friendly ray; And feels no vigor in his limb, 'I would not live alway." Oh! Youth is firmly bound to earth, When hope beams on each comrade's glance; His bosom chords are tuned to mirth, Like harp-strings in the cheerful dance; But Age has felt those ties unbound, Where all his household comforts lay; THE fool hath said, "There is no God:" A far and brilliant course to run? No God!-Who gives the evening dew, The fanning breeze, the fostering shower? Who warms the spring-morn's budding bough, And paints the summer's noontide flower? Who spreads in the autumnal bower, The fruit-tree's mellow stores around; And sends the winter's icy power, T'invigorate the exhausted ground? No God-Who makes the bird to wing Like floating isle, on ocean plains? No God!-Who warms the heart to heave With fair ethereal forms to meet, That tell us of an after life? |