220 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 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 May the dreams of the past, on futurity track 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, But no; it was not a fairy's shell, Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear; PASSING AWAY. While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade 223 And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, While yet I looked, what a change there came ! 224 PASSING AWAY. The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept, From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone,~ (Let me never forget till my dying day The tone or the burden of her lay,-) Passing away! passing away! |