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!

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.

PIERPONT.

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!"

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,)

PASSING

AWAY.

223

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;
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 couldn'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 !"