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T IS A LOWLY GRAVE.

One kindlier heart, all untainted by earth,

That has kept the fresh bloom from its bud and its birth, Whose tears for the sorrows of youth shall be shed, And whose prayer shall still rise for the early dead.

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THEY say, that afar in the land of the west,
Where the bright golden sun sinks in glory to rest,
'Mid fens where the hunter ne'er ventured to tread,
A fair lake, unruffled and sparkling, is spread;
Where, lost in his course, the rapt Indian discovers,
In distance seen dimly, the green isle of lovers.

There verdure fades never; immortal in bloom,
Soft waves the magnolia its groves of perfume;
And low bends the branch with rich fruitage depressed,
All glowing like gems in the crowns of the east;
There the bright eye of nature in mild glory hovers:
'Tis the land of the sunbeam, the green isle of lovers.

Sweet strains wildly float on the breezes that kiss.
The calm-flowing lake round that region of bliss:
Where, wreathing their garlands of amaranth, fair choirs
Glad measures still weave to the sound that inspires
The dance and the revel, 'mid forests that cover,
On high, with their shade, the green isle of the lover.

But fierce as the snake, with his eyeballs of fire, When his scales are all brilliant and glowing with ire, Are the warriors to all, save the maids of their isle, Whose law is their will and whose life is their smile; From beauty, there, valor and strength are not rovers, And peace reigns supreme in the green isle of lovers.

And he who has sought to set foot on its shore,
In mazes perplexed, has beheld it no more;

It fleets on the vision, deluding the view;

Its banks still retire as the hunters pursue :

O, who, in this vain world of wo, shall discover
The home undisturbed, the green isle of the lover!

DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

BY W. C. BRYANT.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown

and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the

jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of

ours.

The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain

Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the wild-rose and the orchis died amid the summer

glow;

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DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the

plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from cut their winter

home,

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance

late he bore,

[more.

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side :

In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast

the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief; Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of

ours,

So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.