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النشر الإلكتروني

DEATH-BED WATCHINGS.

This has been sent to us by a correspondent as from the pen of Mrs. EMILY JUDSON.

SLEEP, love, sleep!

The dusky day is done.

Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep

Wide over groves of balm,

Down from the towering palm,

In at the open casement cooling run,

And round thy lowly bed,

Thy bed of pain,

Bathing thy patient head,

Like grateful showers of rain

They come;

While the white curtains, waving to and fro,

Fan the sick air;

And pityingly the shadows come and go,

With gentle human care,

Compassionate and dumb.

The dusky day is gone,

The night begun;

While prayerful watch I keep,

Sleep, love, sleep!

Is there no magic in the touch

Of fingers thou dost love so much?

Fain would they scatter poppies o'er thee now,

Or, with a soft caress,

The tremulous lip its own nepenthe press,

Upon the weary lid and aching brow.

While prayerful watch I keep,

Sleep, love, sleep!

On the pagoda spire

The bells are swinging

Their little golden circles, in a flutter

With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter,

Till all are ringing,

As if a choir

Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing;
And with a lulling sound

The music floats around,

And drops like balm into the drowsy ear,
Commingling with the hum

Of the Sepoy's distant drum,

And lazy beetle ever droning near;
Sounds these of deepest silence born,
Like night made visible by morn;
So silent, that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbings of my heart,
And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.

The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortice with surprise

At such strange quiet after day's harsh din ;
Then ventures boldly out,

And looks about,

And with his hollow feet

Treads his small evening beat,

Darting upon his

prey

In such a tricksy, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin.
And still the curtains swing

But noiselessly;

The bells a melancholy murmur ring,

As tears were in the sky;

More heavily the shadows fall,

Like the black foldings of a pall,

Where juts the roof-beam from the wall;

The candles flare

With fresher gusts of air;

The beetle's drone

Turns to a dirge-like solitary moan;

Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone.

THE EVENING WIND.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born in 1794, at Cummington, in Massachusetts U. S. His father was a physician of eminence. He displayed a precocious taste for poetry, his first volume being published when he was of the age of thirteen. In 1810, he entered William's College and distinguished himself by his proficiency in languages. Having

completed his education, he became a law-student and was admitted to the Bar in 1815. He removed to New York in 1825. "The Ages" and other poems, among which were most of his finest compositions, were published in 1821, and immediately made him famous, not only in his own country but in Europe. Soon after his arrival in New York, he became the Editor of The New York Monthly Review, in which many of his poems made their first appearance. In 1826 he undertook the Editorship of The Evening Post, a political paper, which he has continued to conduct to this time. He visited England in 1834, and thence travelled through Europe, returning to New York in 1836, and there he still resides. The following is one of his most beautiful compositions.

SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow:
Thou hast been been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,

Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray,
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorch'd land, thou wanderer of the sea!

Nor 1 alone-a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,

Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy ways where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head

To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,

And dry the moisten'd curls that overspread

His temples, while his breathing grows more deep:

And they who stand about the sick man's bed
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Go-but the circle of eternal change,

Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scent from all thy mighty range
Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

TO MARY.

By SHELLEY-the Dedication prefixed to The Revolt of Islam.

So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,

And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,
Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;
Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become
A star among the stars of mortal night,
If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,
Its doubtful promise thus I would unite

With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.

The toil which stole from thee so many an hour
Is ended-and the fruit is at thy feet!
No longer where the woods to frame a bower
With interlaced branches mix and meet,
Or where with sound like many voices sweet,
Water-falls leap among wild islands green,
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen:
But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when

first

The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst

My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was

When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose
From the near school-room, voices, that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes—
The harsh and grating strife of tyrant and of foes.
Alas, that love should be a blight and snare
To those who seek all sympathies in one !—
Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone:--
Yet never found I one not false to me,

Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crush'd and wither'd mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee.

Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart
Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain,
How beautiful and calm and free thou wert
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain
Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,
And walk'd as free as light the clouds among,
Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain
From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung
To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long.

No more alone through the world's wilderness,
Although I trod the paths of high intent,
I journey'd now: no more companionless,
Where solitude is like despair, I went.-
There is the wisdom of a stern content
When Poverty can blight the just and good,
When Infamy dares mock the innocent,

And cherish'd friends turn with the multitude
To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!

Now has descended a serener hour,

And with inconstant fortune, friends return; Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power Which says:-Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. And from thy side two gentle babes are born To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn: And these delights, and thou, have been to me The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.

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