For none returns from those quiet shores,
  Who cross with the boatman cold and pale;
We hear the dip of the golden oars,
  And catch a gleam of the snowy sail;
And lo! they have passed from our yearning hearts,
  They cross the stream and are gone for aye. 
We may not sunder the veil apart
  That hides from our vision the gates of day;
We only know that their barks no more
  May sail with us o’er life’s stormy sea;
Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore,
  They watch, and beckon, and wait for me.

And I sit and think, when the sunset’s gold
  Is flushing river and hill and shore,
I shall one day stand by the water cold,
  And list for the sound of the boatman’s oar;
I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail,
  I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand,
I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale,
  To the better shore of the spirit land. 
I shall know the loved who have gone before,
  And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
  The angel of death shall carry me.

NANCY WOODBURY PRIEST.

GRIEF FOR THE DEAD.

O hearts that never cease to yearn! 
  O brimming tears that ne’er are dried! 
The dead, though they depart, return
  As though they had not died!

The living are the only dead;
  The dead live,—­nevermore to die;
And often, when we mourn them fled,
  They never were so nigh!

And though they lie beneath the waves,
  Or sleep within the churchyard dim,
(Ah! through how many different graves
  God’s children go to him!)—­

Yet every grave gives up its dead
  Ere it is overgrown with grass;
Then why should hopeless tears be shed,
  Or need we cry, “Alas”?

Or why should Memory, veiled with gloom,
  And like a sorrowing mourner craped,
Sit weeping o’er an empty tomb,
  Whose captives have escaped?

’Tis but a mound,—­and will be mossed
  Whene’er the summer grass appears;
The loved, though wept, are never lost;
  We only lose—­our tears!

Nay, Hope may whisper with the dead
  By bending forward where they are;
But Memory, with a backward tread,
  Communes with them afar.

The joys we lose are but forecast,
  And we shall find them all once more;
We look behind us for the Past,
  But lo! ’tis all before!

ANONYMOUS.

THE TWO WAITINGS.

I.

Dear hearts, you were waiting a year ago
  For the glory to be revealed;
You were wondering deeply, with bated breath,
  What treasure the days concealed.

O, would it be this, or would it be that? 
  Would it be girl or boy? 
Would it look like father or mother most? 
  And what should you do for joy?