The Memory of the Dead

EAR dead! they have become

DEA

Like guardian angels to us;
And distant heaven, like home,
Through them begins to woo us;
Love that was earthly, wings

Its flight to holier places;
The dead are sacred things
That multiply our graces.

They whom we loved on earth
Attract us now to heaven;
Who shared our grief and mirth
Back to us now are given.
They move with noiseless foot
Gravely and sweetly round us,

And their soft touch hath cut

Full many a chain that bound us.

Capulet. O child! O child! my soul, and not

my child!

Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead:

And with my child my joys are buried.

Friar Lawrence. Peace, ho, for shame! con

fusion's cure lives not

In these confusions.

Heaven and yourself

Had part in this fair maid: now heaven hath all,
And all the better is it for the maid:

Your part in her you could not keep from death,
But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
The most you sought was her promotion,
For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced;
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O in this love you love your child so ill
That you run mad, seeing that she is well.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Go

Gone

ONE!" said the poet, " and about to be Forgotten: O, how sad a fate is hers!" "How is it sad, my son?" all reverently The old man answered; "though she minister No longer with her lamp to me and thee, She has fulfilled her mission. God transfers Or dims her ray; yet was she blessed as bright, For all her life was spent in giving light.

With Trembling Fingers did we

W

Weave

7ITH trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth
And sadly fell on Christmas-eve.

At our old pastimes in the hall
We gamboll'd, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute shadow watching all.

We paused; the winds were in the beech;
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand

Sat silent, looking each at each.

Then echo-like our voices rang,

We sung tho' every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him

Last year, impetuously we sang.

We ceased; a gentler feeling crept

Upon us; surely rest is meet:

"They rest," we said, "their sleep is sweet," And silence follow'd, and we wept.

Our voices took a higher range;

Once more we sang: "They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,

Nor change to us, although they change:

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather'd power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil."

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night;
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.

- ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

From "The Bark of True Love"

THE port of Peace and Perfect Day

Are just across the azure way :—

Whoever strikes his earthly tent,
We will not wonder that he went,
We will not say that he has died,

But only gone the other side.

BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR.

When we go Home

/HEN we go home, think you 'tis true

WHI

That we shall know as once we knew
You speak with me and I with you-
When we go home?

When we go home I hope to see
A little face look straight at me,
Unchanged from what it used to be,
When we go home.

When we go home 'twill be to hear
A darling voice, so low and clear

Our hearts were thrilled to think it near,
When we go home.

Nor do we care, if only then

We live again the old "has-been,"
When we go home.

When we go home, it must be so,
From out the shades of long-ago

Will come the friends we lost below.

When we go home.

J. L. SCOTT.