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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. 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,)

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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 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

While yet I looked, what a change there came !
Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan:
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,
Yet, just as busily, swung she on;

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PASSING AWAY.

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands, that over the dial swept,

Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept,
And still there came that silver tone

From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone,~ (Let me never forget till my dying day The tone or the burden of her lay,-)

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Passing away! passing away!

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