THOU unrelenting Past! There through the long, long sum-Strong are the barriers round thy mer hours The golden light should lie, dark domain, And fetters, şure and fast, And thick young herbs and groups of Hold all that enter thy unbreathing flowers reign. Far in thy realm withdrawn empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. Childhood, with all its mirth, Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground, And last, Man's Life on earth, Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. Thou hast my better years, Thou hast my earlier friends - the good-the kind, The Yielded to thee with tears venerable form-the exalted mind. Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, un- Their sharpness ere he is aware. revered; With thee are silent fame, Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared. Thine for a space are they — Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last; Thy gates shall yet give way, Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past! All that of good and fair Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, Shall then come forth to wear The glory and the beauty of its prime. They have not perished - no! Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, Smiles, radiant long ago, When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around Earth and her waters, and the depths of air Comes a still voice: Yet a few days and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, And features, the great soul's appar- | Where thy pale form was laid, with ent seat. many tears, In their last sleep; the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone; the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In majesty, and the complaining In the full strength of years, matron, brooks and maid, That make the meadows green; and, | And the sweet babe, and the grayheaded man, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy Shall one by one be gathered to thy waste, side, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch The Summoning, from the innumerable boughs, strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast: Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, About him, and lies down to pleas- | And where the o'ershadowing branch ant dreams. es sweep the grass. The faint old man shall lean his silver head To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, And dry the moistened curls that overspread His temples, while his breathing grows more deep: And they who stand about the sick man's bed, Shall joy to listen to thy distan: sweep, And softly part his curtains to allow Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. Go-at the circle of eternal change, Which is the life of nature, shali restore, With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more; Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange, Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore; And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. LIFE. Он, Life, I breathe thee in the breeze, All that shall live, lie mingled THOU blossom bright with autumn there, dew, Beneath that veil of bloom and And colored with the heaven's own breath, blue, That living zone 'twixt earth and That openest when the quiet light air. Succeeds the keen and frosty night. There lies my chamber dark and still, The atoms trampled by my feet, There wait, to take the place I fill In the sweet air and sunshine sweet. Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest, |