tration of departed ones before, I could not doubt it now.' "Peace I leave with you,' said the wisest spirit that ever passed from earth to heaven. Let us be at‘peace' amid the spirit-mysteries and questionings on which His eye soon shed the light of Eternity." XIII. GONE-BUT NOT LOST. BY MRS. ELLEN STONE. Sweet bud of earth's wilderness, rifled and torn! Fond eyes have wept o'er thee, fond hearts still will mourn : He felt not the burden and heat of the day! He hath pass'd from this earth, and its sorrows, away, And oh! do you question, with tremulous breath, Who cometh to meet him, with light on her brow? She beareth him on to that realm of repose, There shall he for ever, unchanged by decay, Beside the still waters and green pastures stray? And there shall ye join him, with earth's ransomed host, SECTION III. CONSOLATORY POETRY. The principal vein which the poets follow when they dwell on this subject, is in the way of consolation. These sentiments will serve to show what is the burden of the heart in its deepest sorrow when bereaved of friends. It is the hope of blessed and eternal reunion in a better life. To this it instinctively turns as its joyful song in this house of pilgrimage. In the sighings of the poet we see what the heart wants. This is the great stream, ending in the ocean of eternal love, into which all individual tears fall, and are changed from tears of sorrow to tears of joy. Into this stream the poet merges his mysterious soul, whenever he undertakes to speak for us, or to guide and interpret our own feelings to us. Then he feels what we feel, loves what we love, and seeks what we seek. It is remarkable and significant that with this doctrine the poets generally end their consolatory pieces. frequently begin with finally slide into this. this much desired union. They other sources of consolation, but Thus the whole is crowned with This shows whither the heart's wishes tend. Here the aching heart rests, and only here. Here is its home, with what it loves-where else? Even when higher sources of consolation are acknowledged, even when Christ is made the substance of heavenly felicity, still here the heart centres when its sorrows flow from bereavement. Not that friends are dearer to it than Christ, but because that which is the immediate cause of sorrow is most prominent. When one is lost to the heart it leaves the ninety-and-nine others which are safe, and goes after the lost one till it is found. In joy, other attractions in heaven are brighter, but in sorrow and fresh bereavement, this. Nor is this wrong, for He who wept with the sisters of Bethany for their brother Lazarus, is merciful even to our infirmities. Martha did not say to Him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, I would not have wept though my brother had died; but she said, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Neither does He chide her, and say, I am here, that is enough; but He rather encourages her hope in the direction of her lost brother, upon whom her heart was now set in the intensity of her grief, as a source of comfort:-"Thy brother shall rise again." It is proper, then, that the poets terminate their consolations in this precious faith. "In times of bereavement, the mind often becomes utterly depressed and bewildered at its inability of expression, and it turns instinctively to the language of another: to 'the deep sad harmonies that haunt the breast of the poet,' who has foreshadowed a portraiture of our own hearts; and we are comforted by the assurance it gives, that our state is not peculiar. In our weakness of grief we are apt to feel as if alone; as if set apart as a mark for the shafts of adversity; but we now learn the fact, that we are only one of the great brotherhood of sorrow.' The discovery that we have sympathy, and that others weep as well as ourselves, disperses our loneliness, and takes away much of the complaint of our grief. The poet is a comforter which all love; he comes to us so softly, so silently, so feelingly. In the tender hour of fresh bereavement, we instinctively withdraw from others and love to be alone. We hide ourselves from the everyday contact of those who, though they would, cannot feel with us, and measure the full extent and depth of our grief. "We shrink even from the incompetence of those who, from genuine kindliness of heart, obtrude their sympathy upon us. The common-place generalities to which such persons resort, revolt us as heartless and hackneyed; the human voice, even, assumes a dissonance, when it urges us to forget a grief over which the heart yearns with a devoted tenderness, feeling as if relief were a treason to the beloved object. Few can afford consolation in periods like these few should attempt it." At such times we choose our own comforters, and these must have a sacred priestly character-speaking a language removed from the common-place of ordinary life. The poet suits us. He does not only speak gentle and soothing words, but he makes himself the very soul of our grief, speaking rather in us than to us. He has felt the same which we now feel, sought the same relief, and now tells us how and where he found it. His words do not flow coldly from his lips and so fall upon our ears, but we feel them at our heart, welling up from the depths of the soul, warm, tender, and living. Thus he affords light to the heart in its darkness, and life in its death. Truly has it been said, "the poet is the interpreter of the human heart-the expounder of its mysteries. An utterance is given to him which is denied to others, even although their feelings may be akin to his own. Through him Truth speaks: and wild or wayward as may seem her revelations, yet it is the common sentiment, the universal emotion, she speaks; she gives the germ of a nobler principle, the incentive to a higher hope. We weep over his words, relieved by a strange sympathy; find through him a voice and utterance for thoughts too deep for expression; and are at once relieved, comforted, and instructed." I. REUNION ABOVE. LEGGETT. If yon bright stars, which gem the night, Whom death hath torn asunder here, But oh! how dark, how drear, and lone, If there no more the ties shall twine Which death's cold hand alone could sever, |