LINES ON PASSING THE GRAVE OF MY SISTER. BY MICAH P. FLINT. ON yonder shore, on yonder shore, Now verdant with the depths of shade, There is a little infant laid. Forgive this tear.-A brother weeps.— She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone, And summer's forests o'er her wave; 176 ON PASSING THE GRAVE OF MY SISTER. In sounds that seem like sorrow's own, In all their solemn cadence sweep, She came, and passed. Can I forget, How we whose hearts had hailed her birth, Ere three autumnal suns had set, Consigned her to her mother Earth! Joys and their memories pass away; We laid her in her narrow cell, We heaped the soft mould on her breast; Upon her lonely place of rest. Her slumbers in the wilderness. She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone; As, in one broad, eternal tide, The rolling waters onward glide. ON PASSING THE GRAVE OF MY SISTER. 177 There is no marble monument, There is no stone, with graven lie, To tell of love and virtue blent In one almost too good to die. We needed no such useless trace To point us to her resting place. She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone; But, midst the tears of April showers, The genius of the wild hath strown His germs of fruits, his fairest flowers, And cast his robes of vernal bloom She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone; Yet yearly is her grave-turf dressed, TO A CITY PIGEON. BY NATHANIEL P. WILLIS. STOOP to my window, thou beautiful dove! To catch the glance of thy gentle eye. Why dost thou sit on the heated eaves, And forsake the wood with its freshened leaves? Why dost thou haunt the sultry street, When the paths of the forest are cool and sweet? How canst thou bear This noise of people-this sultry air? Thou alone of the feathered race Dost look unscared on the human face; Dost love with man in his haunts to be; TO A CITY PIGEON. 179 And "the gentle dove" Has become a name for trust and love. A holy gift is thine, sweet bird! Thou'rt named with childhood's earliest word! Are its brightest image of moving things. It is no light chance. Thou art set apart, Angelic rays from thy pinions stream. Come then, ever, when daylight leaves Lessons of Heaven, sweet bird, in thee! |