Thus Nature spake, and as her echo, I

Take up her parable, and prophesy :

-Here, as from spring to spring the swallows pass, Perennial daisies shall adorn the grass;

Here the shrill sky-lark build her annual nest,

And sing in heaven while you serenely rest:
On trembling dew-drops morn's first glance shall
shine,

Eve's latest beams on this fair bank decline,
And oft the rainbow steal through light and gloom,
To throw its sudden arch across your tomb;

On

you the moon her sweetest influence shower, And every planet bless you in its hour.

With statelier honours still, in time's slow round, Shall this sepulchral eminence be crown'd, Where generations long to come shall hail The growth of centuries waving in the gale, A forest landmark on the mountain's head, Standing betwixt the living and the dead; Nor while your language lasts, shall traveller cease To say, at sight of your memorial, “ Peace!” Your voice of silence answering from the sod, "Whoe'er thou art, prepare to meet thy God!"*

1832.

* This anticipation has been accomplished. The adjacent plantation has rapidly grown up; the ground has been beautifully laid out; and, in 1835, a conspicuous monument was erected, by public subscription, on the spot where three hundred and thirty-nine bodies, out of upwards of four hundred victims of the Cholera, were interred, to commemorate the said removal of the sufferers from among the living, and their strange insula

tion after death, within that humble enclosure. The shaft is triangular, diminishing in stories from the base to the summit, which was originally surmounted by a plain cross of proportionate elevation. Unfortunately, in the hurricane of January the 7th, 1839, one third of the whole was thrown down. has subsequently been repaired, and crowned with a less graceful form of cross, by which, however, the tapering structure will be less liable to injury from elemental violence.

It

The two following Sonnets were composed on visiting the scene of dilapidation, in February of the same year.

I.

Thou tempest-broken column! still stand on;
More fit memorial of the untimely dead,
Than when the cross upon thy summit shed
A halo round this Golgotha;
'tis gone,

And now the earnest eye, where late it shone,
Is rapt through vague infinity instead,
Up the blue sky, receding over head,
Less and less seen the longer look'd upon.

Thus, where the fragments of thy pinnacle
Lie at thy base, as lie within this plot
The bones of buried mortals,—while I dwell
On where and what may be the spirit's lot,
Thought falls like night on my bewilder'd mind,
The more I search the more I feel I'm blind.

II.

Yet there is Hope, thou storm-struck monument!
Stand on, though half thy glory be laid low

By an unseen and instantaneous blow:
For, as the wind, which thee asunder rent,
Came none knew whence, and none knew whither went,
So the plague smote the slain around thee,-
Surprised its victims; and, with Woe! woe! woe!
Hundreds, unwarn'd, to sudden judgment sent.

-SO

Not for the dead, ye living! but the unborn,
O let the symbol of redeeming Love

Again this renovated shaft adorn,

And point from death below to life above,
That all, who here sin's bitter wages see,
May on this mount remember Calvary!

THE TOMBS OF THE FATHERS.

The Jews occasionally hold a " Solemn Assembly" in the valley of Jeho shaphat, the ancient burial-place of Jerusalem. They are obliged to pay a heavy tax for the privilege of thus mourning, in stillness, at the sepulchres of their ancestors.

PART I.

IN Babylon they sat and wept,
Down by the river's willowy side;
And when the breeze their harp-strings swept,
The strings of breaking hearts replied:

-A deeper sorrow now they hide;

No Cyrus comes to set them free

From ages of captivity.

All lands are Babylons to them,
Exiles and fugitives they roam;
What is their own Jerusalem ?

-The place where they are least at home!

Yet hither from all climes they come;

And pay their gold, for leave to shed
Tears o'er the generations fled.

Around, the eternal mountains stand,

With Hinnom's darkling vale between ;

Old Jordan wanders through the land,
Blue Carmel's sea-ward crest is seen,
And Lebanon yet sternly green
Throws, when the evening sun declines,
Its cedar-shades, in lengthening lines.

But, ah! for ever vanish'd hence,
The temple of the living GOD,
Once Zion's glory and defence!

-Now mourn beneath the oppressor's rod,
The fields which faithful Abraham trod,
Where Isaac walk'd by twilight gleam,
And heaven came down on Jacob's dream.

For ever mingled with the soil,

Those armies of the Lord of Hosts, That conquer'd Canaan, shared the spoil, Quell'd Moab's pride, storm'd Midian's posts, Spread paleness through Philistia's coasts,

And taught the foes, whose idols fell, "There is a God in Israel."

Now, David's tabernacle gone,

What mighty builder shall restore? The golden throne of Solomon,

And ivory palace are no more;

The Psalmist's song, the Preacher's lore, Of all they wrought, alone remain Unperish'd trophies of their reign.

Holy and beautiful of old,

Was Zion 'midst her princely bowers; Besiegers trembled to behold

Bulwarks that set at nought their powers; Swept from the earth are all her towers;

Nor is there-so was she bereft

One stone upon another left.

The

very site whereon she stood,

In vain the eye, the foot would trace;
Vengeance, for saints' and martyrs' blood,
Her walls did utterly deface;

Dungeons and dens usurp their place;
The cross and crescent shine afar,
But where is Jacob's natal star?

PART II.

Still inexterminable, still

Devoted to their mother-land,

Her offspring haunt the temple-hill,
Amidst her desecration stand,

And bite the lip, and clench the hand: -To-day in that lone vale they weep, Where patriarchs, kings, and prophets sleep.

Ha! what a spectacle of woe!

In groups they settle on the ground; Men, women, children gathering slow,