BETTER MOMENTS.

I. P. Willis.

My mother's voice! how even creeps
Its cadence on my lonely hours!
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
Or dew to the unconscious flowers.
I can forget her melting prayer
While leaping pulses madly fly;
But in the still, unbroken air,

Her gentle tone comes stealing by—
And years, and sin, and manhood flee,
And leave me at my mother's knee.

The book of nature, and the print

Of beauty on the whispering sea, Give aye to me some lineament

Of what I have been taught to be.
My heart is harder, and perhaps

My manliness hath drunk up tears;
And there's a mildew in the lapse
Of a few miserable years:
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.

I have been out at eventide

Beneath a moonlight sky of spring, When earth was garnish'd like a bride, And night had on her silver wing: When bursting leaves, and diamond grass, And waters leaping to the light,

And all that make the pulses pass
With wilder fleetness, throng'd the night;
When all was beauty, then have I,

With friends on whom my love is flung Like myrrh on wings of Araby,

Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung;
And when the beauteous spirit there
Flung over me its golden chain,
My mother's voice came on the air
Like the light dropping of the rain,
And resting on some silver star
The spirit of a bended knee,

I've pour'd out low and fervent prayer
That our eternity might be

To rise in heaven, like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light.

I have been on the dewy hills

When night was stealing from the dawn, And mist was on the waking rills,

And teints were delicately drawn

In the grey east; when birds were waking
With a low murmur in the trees,
And melody by fits was breaking
Upon the whisper of the breeze,
And this when I was forth perchance,
As a worn reveller from the dance;
And when the sun sprang gloriously
And freely up, and hill and river

Were catching upon wave and tree
The arrows from his subtle quiver—

I say a voice has thrill'd me then,
Heard on the still and rushing light;
Or, creeping from the silent glen,
Like words from the departing night,
Hath stricken me, and I have press'd
On the wet grass my fever'd brow;
And, pouring forth the earliest,

First prayer with which I learn'd to bow,
Have felt my mother's spirit rush
Upon me as in by-past years,

And, yielding to the blessed gush
Of our ungovernable tears,

Have risen up-the gay, the wild—
As humble as a very child.

THE SPIRIT'S HOME.

Montgomery.

MYSTERIOUS in its birth,

And viewless as the blast,

When has the spirit fled from earth ?

For ever past.

We ask the grave below,

It keeps the secret well;

We call upon the heavens to show:

They will not tell.

Of earth's remotest strand

Are tales and tidings known; But from the spirit's distant land Returneth none.

Winds bear the breath of flowers
To travellers o'er the wave,

But bear no message from the bowers
Beyond the grave.

Proud science scales the skies,

From star to star doth roam,

But reacheth not the shore where lies
The spirit's home.

Impervious shadows hide

This mystery of heaven;

But where all knowledge is denied

There faith is given.

THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD.

Bemans.

THOU'RT passing hence, my Brother,
Oh! my earliest friend, farewell;
Thou'rt leaving me without thy voice,
In a lonely home to dwell;

And from the hills, and from the hearth,
And from the household tree,

With thee departs the lingering mirth,

The brightness goes with thee.

But thou, my Friend, my Brother;

Thou'rt speeding to the shore

Where the dirge-like tone of parting words

Shall smite the soul no more;

And thou wilt see one holy dead,
The last on earth and main ;
Into the sheaf of kindred hearts
Thou wilt be bound again;

Tell then our friend, of boyhood,
That yet his name is heard

On the blue mountains, whence his youth
Pass'd like a swift bright bird.
The light of his exulting brow,
The vision of his glee,

Are on me still-oh! still I trust
That smile again to see.

And tell our fair young Sister,
The rose cut down in spring,
That yet my gushing soul is fill'd
With lays she loved to sing.

Her soft deep eyes look through my dreams,
Tender and sadly sweet :

Tell her

my heart within me burns Once more that gaze to meet.

And tell our white-haired Father,

That, in the paths he trod,
The child he loved the last on earth
Yet walks and worships God.
Say, that his last fond blessing yet
Rests on my soul like dew,

And by its hallowing might I trust
Once more his face to view.