"THE EXILE'S REVERIE."

It is sweet to dream of the vanished times, in this changing land of ours, When we touch the hidden spring of thought, with the wand of mystic powers, That Remembrance yields to our yearning hearts, that are lonely left, and pine For the loves once ours, till shadowy forms come round us, and flit and shine.

Through the gloom that wraps the earth-tired soul, that drifts on life's sea apart, Missing the clasp of a kindred hand, or thrill of heart to heart. Alone! alone! on the wide, wide world, where hope can console no more; Alone! alone! on the friendless waste, strange, on a stranger shore.

Oft times when the gloaming gathers round, and the night wind moans on the hill Like a ghostly voice from the buried dead, when all around is still, In the midnight darkness and silence, I call through the mist and maze, To the sunny joys of the glad, bright dream, of the golden, bygone days.

Then the poem of the wakened long-ago, to the music of memory flows, Now filled as with bridal gladness, now wailing out dirge- like woes; Through sunshine and summer glories, through brightness and fragrant blooms, Through howling storms, 'neath winter skies, through weeping and murky glooms.

And then, when the weird strain ceases, and the fitful music is done, The pictures I love to gaze on, rise slowly, one by one Through the mist of the past slow coming, they give to our eyes once more, What Death has stolen from me, and Death can alone restore.

Again, as in early childhood, I feel the fond caress Of my mother's lips, or I hear the tones of my father's voice that bless His child in its gleeful gambols; Oh! happy and peaceful hours! Ye come in visions of golden noons, and sunshine, and shady bowers!

And the low-breathed prayer when the sunset glow'd crimson in the West, And the sweet "Good-night," and the tender kiss, ere I sank to tranquil rest; Mother! that prayer still haunts me, adown the dreary years, And the earnest tones of thy gentle voice, can steep my soul in tears.

My brothers! faithful hearted! strong in your love, and true; Oh! breaking heart, do you mock me? Can they have perished too? In their morning time, when they shared my dreams of a Crown and a Life-fight won, Thank God, it was their's so early, when my fight had but begun!

Oh, darling, best-beloved! keen now is the aching smart, As when Death's chill touch on our clasped hands fell, when he breathed the hard word "part," Only for earth's short span, my sweet, for love can never die, And the spirit bond but strengthens, as Time's wild waves sweep bye.

Mine! by the vows soft-whispered, where hand in hand we strayed In twilight hours, through summer lanes, or roamed in the lonely glade; But the dream in its glory perished, and earth's brightest hope was fled, And light from my life was faded, when they laid thee with the dead!

Elsie! my bright-haired sister! tender blossom and pure! You drooped in that last storm's fury, too fragile its might to endure; And then I left the home-nest when my last sweet dove had flown, And sought to forget, amid stranger scenes, the sorrows my soul had known.

It's thus the shadowy phantoms come back from the spirit- shore,

When I cry in my lonely anguish for the joys now mine no more. I thrill with a passion'd yearning for the fuller life to be, When my tired soul faints in wonder, lost in earth's mystery!