FANCIES ABOUT A PORTRAIT.

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BY S. D. ANDERSON.

———

O sweet the dreams that gather now,

Around me with their magic power,

The years are falling from my brow,

And hope, and joyousness, and thou,

Are back again with childhood’s hour.

Thou, thou, a bright-eyed laughing girl,

With voice as sweet as summer glee,

And hair upon whose clustering curl

The sunbeams rested gloriously.

Footsteps, as light as legends tell,

By moonlight gather on the lawn,

Scarce shake the dew-drops from the cell

Of some down-looking lily bell,

That opens to the ardent dawn.

A nature mild as summer’s cheek,

On which the smile of beauty lingers;

But glowing as some mountain peak,

That’s tipt with sunlight’s dying fingers.

And now I look far down the vale,

Through which our weary steps have come,

And memory tells me many a tale,

Of hopes that perished in the gale,

Since last we looked on home.

I think of one around whose form

Thy arms have clung in fond caress,

Whose bark amid the world’s wild storm

Was guided by thy tenderness.

And fancy brings thy home again

Back as it was in years ago,

The robin by the window-pane,

Amid the woodbine pours his strain,

In murmurs soft and low.

The meadow, with its singing stream,

Is stretched before the door,

And in its crystal depths the bream

Plays on the pebbled floor.

I hear the songs of infancy,

At evening, in that peaceful cot,

And the young mother in her glee

Echoes them back in mimicry,

And cares and fears are all forgot.

Love’s sunlight pours beneath that roof

Its beams upon the path of all,

Threading with golden hopes the woof

Of life’s bright festival.

But time goes on, and far away,

Beneath another sun and sky,

Two graves are opened, and the day

Looks down into them mild and gay,

With scarce a murmur or a sigh.

And that young mother kneeling there,

Heart-broken, desolate and lone,

Hears nothing in that summer air

But grief would fashion to a moan.

Her heart is lying ’neath the flower

She planted on that quiet sod,

And memory with her magic power

Goes back, at evening’s holy hour,

With pilgrim’s staff and rod.

One morning, when the corn was green,

And song-birds warbled forth their glee,

A wan and faded form was seen

Beneath the church-yard tree.

A pale moss rose was in her breast,

Wet with the dew of burning tears;

And wandering words and looks confessed

That she, amid her wild unrest,

Was living o’er the by-gone years.

And thus with names she loved so well

Still lingering on her clay-cold lips,

Speaking affection’s fadeless spell,

She sunk beneath death’s dark eclipse.

This is a dream from which I start,

And wonder if it can be so—

For there, with ruby lips apart,

And sunny youthfulness, thou art,

As in those years long, long ago.

GEN^L. JOSEPH WARREN. Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine