LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

MRS. SIGOURNEY, formerly Miss Lydia Huntley, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, about the year 1794, and in 1819 was married to Mr. Charles Sigourney, an opulent merchant of Hartford, in which city she now resides. She began to write verses at a very early age, and in 1815 gave to the press her first book, under the title of "Moral Pieces." She has since published six or seven volumes in verse, and about as many in prose. "The Aborigines," her longest poeri, appeared anonymously, at Cambridge, and attracted but little attention. During a visit which she made to Europe in 1840-41, a selection from her poetical writings was printed in London, and soon after her return, in 1842, the most finished and sustained of her longer poems, "Pocahontas," was published in a volume with some minor pieces, in New York. Among her prose works are "Connecticut Forty Years Since," ," "Letters to Young Ladies," "Letters to Mothers," “Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands," "Scenes in My Native Land," and Myrtis, and other Sketchings," the last of which appeared in the fall of 1846. In a reviewal of the poems of Mrs. Sigourney, published by the late Hon. Alexander H. Everett, this accomplished critic remarks that "they commonly express, with great purity, and evident sincerity, the tender affections which are so natural to the female heart, and the lofty aspirations after a higher and better state of being, which constitute the truly ennobling and elevating principle in art, as well as in nature. Love and religion are the unvarying elements of her song. This is saying, in other words, that the substance of her poetry is of the very highest order. If her powers of expression were equal to the purity and elevation of her habits of thought and feeling, she would be a female Milton, or a Christian Pindar." A full and splendidly illustrated edition of the Poetical Works of Mrs. Sigourney, has just been published by Carey & Hart, of Philadelphia.

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BARZILLAI THE GILEADITE.

Let me be buried by the grave of my father and of my mother."-2 Sam. xix. 37. SON of Jesse!-let me go,

Why should princely honors stay me?—

Where the streams of Gilead flow,

Where the light first met mine eye,

Thither would I turn and die ;

Where my parents' ashes lie,

King of Israel !-bid them lay me.

Bury me near my sire revered,

Whose feet in righteous paths so firmly trod,

Who early taught my soul with awe
To heed the prophets and the law,
And to my infant heart appeared

Majestic as a God:

O! when his sacred dust

The cerements of the tomb shall burst,
Might I be worthy at his feet to rise
To yonder blissful skies,

Where angel-hosts resplendent shine, Jehovah-Lord of hosts, the glory shall be thine.

Cold age upon my breast

Hath shed a frostlike death;

The wine-cup hath no zest,

The rose no fragrant breath;

Music from my ear hath fled,

Yet still the sweet tone lingereth there.

The blessing that my mother shed

Upon my evening prayer.

Dim is my wasted eye

To all that beauty brings,

The brow of grace-the form of symmetry

Are half-forgotten things;

Yet one bright hue is vivid still,

A mother's holy smile, that soothed my sharpest ill.

Memory, with traitor-tread

Methinks, doth steal away

Treasures that the mind hath laid
Up for a wintry day.

Images of sacred power,

Cherished deep in passion's hour,

Faintly now my bosom stir:

Good and evil like a dream

Half obscured and shadowy seem,

Yet with a changeless love my soul remembereth her, Yea-it remembereth her :

Close by her blessed side, make ye my sepulchre.

DEATH OF AN

And dashed it out.

INFANT.

DEATH found strange beauty on that polished brow,
There was a tint of rose
He touched the veins with ice,

On cheek and lip.

And the rose faded.

Forth from those blue eyes

There spake a wishful tenderness, a doubt

Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence
Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound
The silken fringes of those curtaining lids

Forever. There had been a murmuring sound
With which the babe would claim its mother's ear,
Charming her even to tears. The spoiler set
The seal of silence. But there beamed a smile,
So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow,

Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal
The signet-ring of heaven.

WHEN glowing in the eastern sky,
The Sabbath morning meets the eye,
And o'er a weary, care worn scene,
Gleams like the ark-dove's leaf of green,

How welcome over hill and dale,

Thy hallowed sunimons loads the gale,
Sweet bell! Church bell

When earthly joys and sorrows end,
And towards our long repose we tend,

How mournfully thy tone doth call
The weepers to the funeral,

And to the last abode of clay,
With solemn knell mark out the way,

Sad bell! Church bell!

If to the clime where pleasures reign,
We through a Saviour's love attain,
If freshly to an angel's thought,
Earth's unforgotten scenes are brought,
Will not thy voice, that warned to prayer,
Be gratefully remembered there,

Blessed bell! Church bell?

THE TREE OF LOVE.

BESIDE the dear domestic bower,
There sprang a tree of healing power;
Its leaflets, damp with gentle rain,
Could soothe or quell the pang of pain;
And 'neath its shade a maiden grew,
She shared its fruit, she drank its dew.

Oft at her side a youth was seen,
With glance of love and noble mien;
At twilight hour a favored guest,
Her trembling hand he warmly pressed;
At length with guileless heart and free,
She said, "I'll plant that tree for thee."

Her little brother climbed her knee:
"You must not go away from me;
The nightly prayer with me you say,
And soothe me when I'm tired of play :"
His sister's eye with tears was dim:
She said, "I'll plant that tree for him."

"Its roots are deep," the mother said;
"Beyond the darkling grave they spread;"

"Thy hand is weak," the father cried;

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Too young thou art to be a bride."

Serene she spake, "I look above
For strength to plant the tree of love."

Before the holy priest she stood,

Her fair cheek dyed with rushing blood;
And as, with hands to heaven displayed,
Strong vows upon her soul he laid,
Her heaving breast, like fluttering bird,
Her
snowy mantle wildly stirred.

But when the hallowed cirque of gold,
Of deathless love the promise told,
Mysterious power her spirit felt,
And at the altar's foot she knelt:
"My God, my God, I'll cling to thee,
And plant for him that blessed tree."

Around their home its branches spread,
Its buds she nursed, its root she fed;
Though flaunting crowds, with giddy look,
Of toil so meek slight notice took,
Yet hovering angels marked with pride
The green tree of the blessed bride.

DEATH OF A FRIEND.

Ir is not when the good obey

The summons of their God,
And meekly take the narrow couch
Beneath the burial sod,

That keenest anguish pours its wail,
Despairing o'er their rest,

For praise should mingle with the pang
That wring's the mourner's breast.

It is not when the saint departs,

Whose wealth was hid on high, That bitterest tears of grief should gush From sad bereavement's eye;