Or if, while wandering fancy weaves Light as the zephyr's whispered kiss, Or,-heard by evening's silver star, While sleep's light wreaths thy temples twine,Breathes-like the harp's wild tones afarThe plighted vow-" For ever thine!"Then calmly sleep-for o'er thy breast My spirit breathes its raptured rest! P. A MOTHER'S GRIEF. A Sketch from Life. BY THE REV. THOMAS DALE. To mark the sufferings of the babe To see the infant tears gush forth, Thro' dreary days and darker nights, The quick and shortened breath; To watch the last dread strife draw near, And pray that struggle brief, Though all is ended with its close, THIS is a mother's grief! To see, in one short hour, decayed The hope of future years; To feel how vain a father's prayers, To think the cold grave now must close O'er what was, once, the chief Of all the treasured joys of earth,- Yet, when the first wild throb is past To lift the eye of faith to heaven, ON AN HOUR-GLASS. MARK the golden grains that pass, See the shining current run; Yet, let some hand invert its frame, But who shall turn the glass for man, Which time has scattered with his hand; And bid it run another hour? -A thousand years of toil were vain, To gather up a single grain! J. M'C. THE LADY OF BEECHGROVE. A SKETCH. BY MISS MITFORD, Author of "Our Village." THOSE who live in a thickly inhabited and very pretty country, close to a large town,—within a morning's ride of London, and an easy distance from Bath, Cheltenham, and the sea,-must lay their account, (especially if there be also excellent roads and a capital pack of fox hounds,) on some of the evils which are generally found to counterbalance so many conveniences;-such as a most unusual dearness and scarcity of milk, cream, butter, eggs, and poultry-luxuries held proper to rural life,—a general corruption of domestics, and—above all—a perpetual change and fluctuation of neighbours. The people in this pretty H** shire country are as mutable as the six-months denizens of Richmond or Hampstead; -mere birds of passage, who "come like shadows, so depart." If a resident of ten years ago were, by any chance, to come here now, he would be in great luck if he found three faces of gentility that he could recognise. I do not mean to insinuate that faces, in our parts, wax old or ugly sooner than else |