w should they know that death
Such perfect beauty mars?
And like the earth, its crimson bloom and breath;
Fallen from on high,
Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die!--
All their concerted springs of harmony
Snapped rudely, and the generous music gone.

A strain--a mellow strain--
A wailing sweetness filled the sky;
The stars, lamenting in unborrowed pain,
That one of their selectest ones must die!
Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest!
Alas! 'tis evermore our destiny,
The hope, heart-cherished, is the soonest lost;
The flower first budden, soonest feels the frost:
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest?
And, like the pale star shooting down the sky,
Look they not ever brightest when they fly
The desolate home they blessed?

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.

* * * * *

PASSING AWAY.

Was it the chime of a tiny bell
That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,
Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell
That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light.
And he his notes as silvery quite.
While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?
Hark! the notes on my ear that play
Are set to words; as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell.
Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing);
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told
Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow;
And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold,
Seemed to point to the girl below.
And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and of wom