to each other?” “Oh! no,” she quickly replied, “to my sister:  she sleeps here.”  “But your sister is dead?” “Oh! yes, sir; but she hears the birds sing.”  “Well, if she does hear the birds sing, she cannot see that wreath of flowers.”  “But she knows I put it there; I told her, before they took her away from our house, I would come and see her every morning.”  “You must” I continued, “have loved that sister very much; but you will never talk with her any more, never see her again.”  “Yes, sir,” she replied, with a brightened look, “I shall see her always in heaven.”  “But she has gone there already, I trust.”  “No, she stops under this tree till they bring me here, and then we are going to heaven together.”  “But she has gone already, my child:  you will meet her there, I hope; but certainly she is gone, and left you to come afterward.”  She cast to me a look of inquiring disappointment, and the tears came to her eyes.

Oh! yes, my sweet child, be it so,
  That, near the cypress-tree,
Thy sister sees those eyes o’erflow,
  And fondly waits for thee;
That still she hears the young birds sing,
  And sees the chaplet wave,
Which every morn thy light hands bring,
  To dress her early grave;
And in a brighter, purer sphere,
  Beyond the sunless tomb,
Those virtues that have charmed us here
  In fadeless life shall bloom.

* * * * *

The little flower-garden.

In yonder village burying-place,
  With briers and weeds o’ergrown,
I saw a child, with beauteous face,
  Sit musing all alone.

Without a shoe, without a hat,
  Beside a new-raised mound,
The little Willie pensive sat,
  As if to guard the ground.

I asked him why he lingered thus
  Within that gray old wall. 
“Because,” said he, “it is to us
  The dearest place of all.”

“And what,” said I, “to one so young,
  Can make the place so dear?”
“Our mother,” said the lisping tongue,—­
  They laid our mother here.

And since they made it mother’s lot,
  We like to call it ours: 
We took it for our garden-spot,
  And planted it with flowers.

We know ’twas here that she was laid;
  And yet they tell us, too,
She’s now a happy angel made,
  To live where angels do.

Then she will watch us from above,
  And smile on us, to know
That here her little children love
  To make sweet flowerets grow.

My sister Anna’s gone to take
  Her supper, and will come,
With quickest haste that she can make,
  To let me run for some.

We do not leave the spot alone,
  For fear the birds will spy
The places where the seeds were sown,
  And catch them up and fly.

We love to have them come and feed,
  And sing and flit about;
Yet not where we have dropped the seed,
  To find and pick it out.