A RECOLLECTION OF MARY F.,

A YOUNG LADY UNEXPECTEDLY REMOVED FROM A LARGE FAMILY CIRCLE.

Her life had twice been saved, once from the flames, and again from the water, by an affectionate father.

THRICE born for earth and twice for heaven,
A lovely maiden once I knew,

To whom 'tis now in glory given

To grow, as here in shade she grew;
Brief was her course, but starry bright;
The linnet's song, the lily's white,

The fountain's freshness,—these shall be
Meet emblems of that maid to me.

A weeping babe to light she came,

And changed for smiles a mother's throes;
In childhood from devouring flame
Rescued, to second life, she rose;
A father's arm had pluck'd her thence ;
That arm again was her defence,
When buried in the strangling wave,
He snatch'd her from an ocean grave.

Twice born for heaven as thrice for earth,
When God's eternal Spirit moved

On her young heart, a nobler birth
Than nature can confer, she proved :
-The dew-drop in the breeze of morn,
Trembling and sparkling on the thorn,
Falls to the ground, escapes the eye,
Yet mounts on sunbeams to the sky.

Thus in the dew of youth she shone,
Thus in the morn of beauty fell;
Even while we gazed, the form was gone,
Her life became invisible;

Her last best birth, with her last breath,
Came in the dark disguise of death;
Grief fill'd her parents' home of love,
But joy her Father's house above.

1833

THE CHOLERA MOUNT.

LINES ON THE BURYING-PLACE FOR PATIENTS WHO DIED OF CHOLERA MORBUS; A PLEASANT EMINENCE IN SHEFFIELD PARK.

Written during the prevalence of the disease in 1832, and while great terror of infection from it was experienced throughout the kingdom, sanctioned by legislative authority, requiring the separate interment of its unfortunate victims.

IN death divided from their dearest kin,
This is "a field to bury strangers in:"
Fragments, from families untimely reft,
Like spoils in flight or limbs in battle left,
Lie here ; a sad community, whose bones
Might feel, methinks, a pang to quicken stones;
While from beneath my feet they seem to cry,
"Oh! is it nought to you, ye passers by!
When from its earthly house the spirit fled,
Our dust might not be 'free among the dead?'
Ah! why were we to this Siberia sent,
Doom'd in the grave itself to banishment?"

Shuddering humanity asks, "Who are these? And what their crime?"

- They fell by one disease! By the blue pest, whose gripe no art can shun, No force unwrench, out-singled one by one;

When, like a monstrous birth, the womb of fate
Bore a new death of unrecorded date,

And doubtful name. - Far east the fiend begun
Its course; thence round the world pursued the

sun,

The ghosts of millions following at its back,
Whose desecrated graves betray'd their track.
On Albion's shores unseen the invader stept;
Secret and swift through field and city swept;
At noon, at midnight, seized the weak, the strong,
Asleep, awake, alone, amid the throng;

Kill'd like a murderer; fix'd its icy hold,
And wrung out life with agony of cold;

Nor stay'd its vengeance where it crush'd the prey,
But set a mark, like Cain's, upon their clay,
And this tremendous seal impress'd on all,
"Bury me out of sight and out of call.”

Wherefore no filial foot this turf may tread, No kneeling mother kiss her baby's bed; No maiden unespoused, with widow'd sighs, Seek her soul's treasure where her true love lies: All stand aloof, and eye this mount from far, As panic-stricken crowds some baleful star,

Strange to the heavens, that, with bewilder'd light, Like a lost spirit wanders through the night.

Yet

many a mourner weeps her fallen state, In many a home by these left desolate,

Once warm with love, and radiant with the smiles Of woman, watching infants at their wiles,

Whose eye of thought, when now they throng her

knees,

Pictures far other scene than that she sees,
For one is wanting,-one, for whose dear sake,
Her heart for very tenderness would ache,
As now with anguish,-doubled when she spies
In this his lineaments, in that his eyes,

In each his image with her own commix'd,
And there, at least, through life their union fix'd.

Humanity again asks, "Who are these? And what their crime?"—They fell by one disease; Not by the Proteus-maladies that strike

Man into nothingness, not twice alike;

But when they knock'd for entrance at the tomb, Their fathers' bones refused to make them room; Recoiling Nature from their presence fled,

As though a thunderbolt had smote them dead; Their cries pursued her with the thrilling plea, "Give us a little earth for charity!"

She linger'd, listen'd, all her bosom yearn'd, Through every vein the mother's pulse return'd; Then, as she halted on this hill, she threw Her mantle wide, and loose her tresses flew : "Live!" to the slain, she cried, "My children, live!

This for an heritage to you I give;

Had death consumed you by the common lot,

You with the multitude had been forgot,

Now through an age of ages shall

ye not."