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Thus 'tis Nature speaks aloud,
Why should fragile man be proud?

The fairest form, the sweetest face,
Must quickly yield to death's embrace,
Must leave the light, must seek the gloom,
Must be the tenant of the tomb.

No earthly king, 'mid pomp and pride,
Can turn the dart of death aside.
Thus 'tis Nature speaks aloud,
Why should fragile man be proud?

The virgin fair, profuse in charms,
Whose beauty every bosom warms,
The cottage girl, and gaudy queen,
Alike must quit this transient scene;
Must leave each glittering bauble here,
And in another world appear.

Thus 'tis Nature speaks aloud,

Why should fragile man be proud?

EUTHANASIA.

A Tribute to the Memory of C. W.

ANON.

ALAS! and has the stormy cloud of death
Cast its dark shadow o'er the summer day
Of Catherine's life?—Yes, yes, it is too true!—
High in thy citadel, O king of fears,

Thy banner floats; for o'er thy silent waves
A lovely bark has sailed, to viewless worlds.
Ah, Catherine! how soon thy glass has run !
How soon the golden years of thy young life
Passed, like the pageants of an evening sky!
They were sweet flowers in the parterre of Time,
Expanding to the sun of youthful hope;
But soon they fell beneath the spoiler's scythe;~
Yet pensive Memory, in her "saddest stole,"
Snatches their faded relics from his grasp,
And fondly hides them in her hallowed urn.
How little did I think when last we met,
When jocund youth sat smiling on thy brow,
And cast his rosy mantle o'er thy cheek,
In token of his undisputed reign,

That, ere two moons, he there dethroned should sit,

Beneath the pallid canopy of death!

In radiant prism of deluded hope, I viewed thee, robed in the rainbow garb Of all the joys of this, our lower world; I thought that, when beneath my cypress shade, I should be sleeping in my narrow house, (The long grass, and the hollow desert wind Singing my mournful requiem,) thou should'st be The gayest of the gay,-should'st lead the airy dance

Of pleasure-but, alas! the fatal dart

Shivered the glass,—and the bright colours fled! Yet let me wipe the burning tear away,

And turn to yon bright heaven the eye of hope.

'Tis sweet to think that, while she dwelt on

earth,

She heard salvation's joyful tidings oft-
Salvation finished by the Mighty God

In human fashion; and to Adam's tribes
Freely proclaimed-free as the sun that glides,-
Free as the air that fans the brow of morn:
To each sad exile from the face of God
Thus the auspicious declaration runs—

-"Believe—and to thy Father's house return."
'Tis sweet to think that when she came to stand
Upon the icy bank of death's dark flood,
High o'er its waters, that mysterious bridge,
Completed by Immanuel's life and death,
Arose in view; and thus she safely passed
From the destroyer, and the storms of life,
Into the cloudless hemisphere of heaven.

THOUGHTS AND IMAGES.

MONTGOMERY.

"Come like shadows, so depart."

Macbeth.

THE Diamond, in its native bed,
Hid like a buried star may lie,
Where foot of man must never tread,
Seen only by its Maker's eye:

And though imbued with beams to grace
His fairest work, in woman's face,

Darkling, its fire may fill the void,
Where fixed at first in solid night;
Nor, till the world shall be destroyed,
Sparkle one moment into light.

The Plant, upspringing from the seed,
Expands into a perfect flower;
The virgin daughter of the mead,

Wooed by the sun, the wind, the shower: In loveliness beyond compare,

It toils not, spins not, knows no care;
Trained by the secret hand, that brings
All beauty out of waste and rude,
It blooms its season, dies, and flings
Its germs abroad in solitude.

Almighty skill, in ocean's caves,

Lends the light Nautilus a form To tilt along the Atlantic waves,

Fearless of rock, or shoal, or storm;
But should a breath of danger sound,
With sails quick furled it dives profound,
And far beneath the tempest's path,
In coral grots, defies the foe,
That never brake, in heaviest wrath,
The Sabbath of the deep below.

Up from his dream, on twinkling wings,
The Skylark soars amid the dawn;
Yet, while in Paradise he sings,
Looks down upon the quiet lawn,

Where flutters, in his little nest,
More love than music e'er expressed:
Then, though the nightingale may thrill
The soul with keener ecstasy,

The merry bird of morn can fill
All nature's bosom with his glee.

The Elephant embowered in woods,
Coeval with their trees might seem,
As though he drank from Indian floods
Life in a renovating stream;

Ages o'er him have come and fled,
'Midst generations of the dead,

His bulk survives, to feed and range,

Where ranged and fed of old his sires;
Nor knows advancement, lapse, or change,
Beyond their walks, till he expires.

Gem, flower, and fish, the bird, the brute,
Of every kind, occult or known,
(Each exquisitely formed to suit

Its humble lot, and that alone,)
Through ocean, earth, and air fulfil,
Unconsciously, their Maker's will,
Who gave, without their toil or thought,

Strength, beauty, instinct, courage, speed;

While through the whole, his pleasure wrought

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But Man, the master-piece of God;

Man, in his Maker's image framed,-Though kindred to the valley's clod, Lord of this low creation named,

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