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The marble melted from the breast,

And all the Mother gush'd in tears.

THE RETURN.

The cottage in the peaceful vale,
The jasmine round the door,
The hill still shelters from the gale,
The brook still glides before.

Without the porch, one summer noon,

The Hermit-dweller see!

In musing silence bending down,

The book upon his knee.

Who stands between thee and the sun?-
A cloud herself,-the Wand'ring One!-
A vacant sadness in the eyes,

The mind a razed, defeatured scroll;
The light is in the laughing skies,

And darkness, Eva, in thy soul!
Yet still the native instinct stirr'd
The darkness of the breast-
She flies, as flies the wounded bird

Unto the distant nest;

O'er hill and waste, from land to land,
Her heart the faithful instinct bore;

And there, behold the Wanderer stand
Beside her Childhood's Home once more!

LIGHT AND DARKNESS.

When earth is fair, and winds are still.
When sunset gilds the western hill,
Oft by the porch, with jasmine sweet,
Or by the brook, with noiseless feet,
Two silent forms are seen;

So silent they-the place so lone-
They seem like souls, when life is gone,
That haunt where life has been:

And his to watch, as in the past
Her soul had watch'd his soul.
Alas! her darkness waits the last,
The grave the only goal!

It is not what the leech can cure-
An erring chord, a jarring madness:

A calm so deep, it must endure

So deep, thou scarce canst call it sadness;

A summer night, whose shadow falls
On silent hearths in ruin'd halls.

Yet, through the gloom, she seem'd to feel
His presence like a happier air;

Close by his side she loved to steal,
As if no ill could harm her there!
And when her looks his own would seek,
Some memory seem'd to wake the sigh,
Strive for kind words she could not speak,
And bless him in the tearful eye.

O sweet the jasmine's buds of snow,
In mornings soft with May,
And silver-clear the waves that flow

To shoreless deeps away;

But heavenward from the faithful heart

A sweeter incense stole ;

The onward waves their source desert,

But Soul returns to Soul!

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DAY dawned:-Within a curtained room,

Filled to faintness with perfume,

A lady lay at point of doom.

Day closed-A Child had seen the light;
But for the lady, fair and bright,

She rested in undreaming night.

Spring rose-The lady's grave was green;
And near it oftentimes was seen

A gentle Boy, with thoughtful mien.

Years fled :--He wore a manly face,
And struggled in the world's rough race,
And won, at last, a lofty place.

And then-he died! Behold, before ye,
Humanity's poor sum and story;
Life-Death, and all that is of Glory.

WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

WITHOUT.

THE winds are bitter; the skies are wild;

From the roof comes plunging the drowning rain: Without,-in tatters, the world's poor child

Sobbeth abroad her grief, her pain!

No one heareth her, no one heedeth her :

But Hunger, her friend, with his bony hand

Grasps her throat, whispering huskily

"What dost Thou in a Christian land?"

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