Breathed from the ocean of eternity! -And oh! without them, who could bear the storms That fall in roaring blackness o'er the waters Of agitated life: then hopes arise All round our sinking souls, like those fair birds O'er whose soft plumes the tempest hath no power, Waving their snow-white wings amid the darkness, And wiling us, with gentle motion, on To some calm island! on whose silvery strand Dropping at once, they fold their silent pinions,And, as we touch the shores of paradise, In love and beauty walk around our feet!' Professor Wilson. THE BIBLE. What were the world without this holy book,- Where helpless man, for bliss in vain might look, W. C. R. THE SAILOR'S DEATHBED. Written on hearing of the Death of H. N. DALLAS, Esq. on board of the Lady Melville, East Indiaman, in Sangor Bay. At evening when the sun went down, In the cloudless wilds of the twilight deep; While yet the gleam of the shrinking day We gathered the curtain's folds away To gaze on the dying one. And the faint light fell on his faded brow The landward breezes had cooled the air, And wistfully gazed through the lattice, where It seemed, as he thought, that the sun had gone To beam on that land he had called his own. Oh! recollection was busy then In his young and faithful heart, As it sadly brooded on moments, when His home-and the voices he loved to hear; And a troubled joy seemed yet to flow And his burning hands o'er his eyelids passed, With feeble aim he raised his hand, That mute request too well we knew, And our plighted words we passed, That his loved of home should learn how true His heart was till the last, That his mother might ponder with grateful joy We spoke--as the sound of the evening gun But the boy still gazed on the west--like one And death, like a sleep on his young heart fell, 'Mid the thoughts of the home he had loved so well. A. B. P. THE HOME FEVER. [From the Manuscript of a Volume of Original Poems which will shortly be published.] We sat in a green verandah's shade Its fairy network around us, and made A harp for the cool sea wind, That came there with its low wild tones at night Like a sigh that is telling of past delight. And that wind, with its tale of flowers, had come And the waves, like wanderers returning home, And the conch's far homecall, the parrot's cry, We sat alone in the trelliced bower, And we dreamt of the banks and bonny braes' And he—the friend at my side that sate, 'Mid the fields and the flowers of joy-that Fate, Like a mother had smiled upon; But alas! for the time when our hopes have wings, And when memory to grief, like a Syren sings. His home had been on the stormy shore Of Albyn's mountain land, His ear was tuned to the breaker's roar, And he loved the bleak sea sand, And the torrent's din, and the howling breeze |