right, when he said, 'much'sever you'll know me, when we bof git ober Jordan?' Surely it is not strange, either, that we should people the stars with those who have gone on before; that we should fancy their gentle eyes bending upon us at twilight, 'cos,' as the old man expressed it, 'Heaven right in sight.' But there blazes the star still, over the woods. 'Tis The Flag-star of Even. SHE lieth just there in the offing of Heaven, No sound of artillery smiteth the ear— So calm you can catch e'en the fall of a tear!— Behold now, far out in the harbor of Heaven, Her cable of crystal, and spars of the day,- As glimmers the moon through the rack of the storm, For loved ones and lost ones that never can die! Oh! child of my dreams-indweller of Heaven! Not a breath moves a streamer, or rattles a shroud; Hark! soft to mine ear from the Flag-Star of Even, The sweet and unwritten IONIC of Heaven! Like the foot-fall of thought in the halls of the soul? Like the coming of twilight, around me it stole Like the music of wings it filled all the air, The words that were said, I can never impart, Oh! vision celestial! wherever thou art, Magnetic to thee turns the thought of my heart; The Last Rose of Summer. ONE of the boys brought me a rose, a red rose, today, or rather a red rose to be, for it is nothing but a bud yet; and there was wisdom in that, unusual in this queer world. A full-blown blessing is pretty near ready to fade, and so the urchin brought me a rose before it was a rose. Frosts stay late, and come early, in the great latitude of earth, and nearly all our hopes and happiness are in the bud—always in the bud. They seldom blossom-they seldom ripen-they keep us waiting for summer; the early rains' of the human heart fall, but somehow a winter intervenes between April and July-'the latter rains' are shed upon our graves, and the buds ne'er come to blooming. Well, were there no better land,' no brighter skies, no fairer flowers, Death's door would be a darker portal than it is. But there is more about this bud, that the Chemist might find out. It is dust-nothing but tinted and fragrant dust; and into what forms, may it not have entered, in the transmigrations of time! Perhaps the very iron that lends the blush to the half-folded leaves, that the gentle winds would have unravelled, had it not been among the last roses of summer,” has given color to some cheek that grew pale when the King of Shadows came-some cheek that had glowed beneath the lips of beauty, or at the first soft whisper of love-some cheek whose elements were strown to the winds; but kind Nature cared for them all, and shaped them out anew, in the bud of beauty that now lies withering before me. So, if it ever be your lot-God grant it never may!—to stand by the grave of one who died in beauty-one whom you loved, living, and mourned, dead, and the little billow of green turf above her has subsided, and a rose-tree waves there, in the soft summer air, leave a tear on it, if you will, but pluck not a bud! In what disguisings does the past still linger around us! "The Dead Past!" It is not dead; it lives in the flower, the fountain, and the bow. Nay, the very tears shed by Humanity yesterday, are in the pearly and golden clouds of to-day. In the grand cycle of being, Death is nothing but change |