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A PLEDGE TO THE DYING YEAR.

BY M. E. BROOKS.

FILL to the brim! one pledge to the past,
As it sinks on its shadowy bier;

Fill to the brim! 'tis the saddest and last
We pour to the grave of the year!

Wake, the light phantoms of beauty that won us
To linger awhile in those bowers;

And flash the bright day-beams of promise upon us,
That gilded life's earlier hours.

Here's to the love-though it flitted away,

We can never, no, never forget!

Through the gathering darkness of many a day,

One pledge will we pour to it yet.

Oh, frail as the vision, that witching and tender,

And bright on the wanderer broke,

When Irem's own beauty in shadowless splendour, Along the wild desert awoke.

Fill to the brim! one pledge to the glow

Of the heart in its purity warm!

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A PLEDGE TO THE DYING YEAR.

Ere sorrow had sullied the fountain below,

Or darkness enveloped the form;

Fill to that life-tide! oh warm was its rushing
Through Adens of arrowy light,

And yet like the wave in the wilderness gushing, "T will gladden the wine-cup to-night.

Fill to the past! from its dim distant sphere

Wild voices in melody come;

The strains of the by-gone, deep echoing here,

We pledge to their shadowy tomb;

And like the bright orb, that in sinking flings back One gleam o'er the cloud-covered dome,

May the dreams of the past, on futurity track

The hope of a holier home!

PASSING AWAY-A DREAM.

BY J. PIER PONT.

WAS it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light,

And he, his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,

Are set to words :-as they float, they say,
Passing away! passing away!"

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But no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl for a pendulum swung,
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a Canary bird swing,)

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PASSING AWAY.

And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say, Passing away! passing away!

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O, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed:—in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride ;-
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,

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Passing away! passing away!"

PASSING AWAY.

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

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And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,
That marched so calmly round above her,
Was a little dimmed, -as when Evening steals
Upon Noon's hot face. -Yet one could n't but love her,
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;-
And she seemed, in the same silver tone to say,
Passing away! passing away!"

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