Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland

by Abigail Stanley Hanna

A lovely daughter followed her at the early age of sixteen, another ere she reached the meridian of life, leaving seven children. Another daughter passed away just as her sun was verging toward the western hemisphere, leaving a son and daughter. The son soon followed her and was laid by the side of his mother and grandmother.

The crimson spot upon the daughter's cheek, accompanied by the hacking cough, seem to denote that the tardy messenger will soon bear another victim to the mansions of death. Another daughter too is lingering upon the confines of the grave, while the fatal seeds are taking deep root in the constitutions of two of the sons, and heralding by unmistakable evidence the approach of death.

But why particularize? Many, very many who have walked with us side by side, in the sweet associations of life, are mingled with the long train that are buried beneath the "clods of the valley," while there is a long train of living victims marching before the fearful blight to the open tomb.

No monarch sways his despotic sceptre over so numerous a population as this fell destroyer, in his unseen lurking places, "drinking up the very fountains of human life." But when will the sons of men learn to think? with all the blight of death around, cutting one down upon the right hand and another upon the left, the thoughtless crowd pass on, little seeming to heed their own mortality. They look into the open grave, or watch the passing funeral perhaps with a momentary sadness, and turns lightly again to the active concerns of life, mingling in its gaities and dissipation, dancing on to the very whirlpool that is soon to engulf their frail bark, and bear it away where hope can never come.

Happy they who receive instruction from the revelations of God's holy word, and imbibe its precepts into their heart; who, cleansed in a Saviour's blood, are made recipients of his rich grace, and are thus prepared to enter that "land where death comes not."

To Mrs. A---- B----, on the Death of Her Child.

"Are they not all ministering spirits?"

"Mother, do not weep for me,
Shining angels guide my way;
And oft they lead me back to thee,
Through realms of everlasting day.

I may not burst the spirit's tie,
Or lift the dim, mysterious screen,
That hides me from thy mortal eye;
But I may visit thee unseen.

Night comes not here; no evening shade
Ere gathers round the throne of God;
And when your setting sunbeams fade,
I visit then your lone abode.

The twilight hour was dear to me,
With murmur'd tone of evening prayer;
When with hands clasp'd upon your knee,
And learned to lisp "Our Father" there.

There I first caught the notes of praise,
Flowing from a mother's tongue.
Which through eternity shall raise
A holy, high, angelic song.

And then your thoughts are all of me,
So softly nestling by your side;
I wait to hear those trembling tones,
In which you sang the day I died.

Your patient watch beside my couch,
You fain my ev'ry woe beguil'd;
For anxiously, and tenderly,
You ever watch'd your dying child.

But all your efforts were in vain,--
Friends or physicians could not save;
For ghastly death his mandate gave,
To lay me in the silent grave.

And scarce had rosy finger'd morn
Unrolled her earliest tints of gray,
To usher in the peaceful dawn
Of that delightful Sabbath day,--

When, silently, the angel came,
With upraised eye, and beck'ning hand,
And gently folding in his arms,
Bore me to the spirit land.

Where sweet transporting voices stole
On my enraptur'd eye and ear,
That spoke the Sabbath of the soul.
Ceaseless as the eternal year.

Here angel and arch-angel bow
In worship round the great white throne;
And ceaseless hallelujahs rise,
To the Almighty, Three and One.

Each has a mission to perform,
As swift through ambient air they fly;
'Tis mine to minister to thee,
And gently woo thee to the sky.

Mother, there are jewels bright
Graven on your deathless soul,
And brighter shall their radiance glow,
While everlasting ages roll.

Mother, they are pure thoughts of heaven,
Murmur'd oft upon your ear,
Which God to me had kindly given,
Your solitary way to cheer.

Mother, these are memories sweet,
Deeply treasur'd in your heart,
Which time, with his restless change,
May never dare to bid depart.

Sometimes across your lap I lie,
And breathe that evening prayer again,
And looking in your tearful eye,
Again repeat that sweet amen.

Then mother, leave your child of earth
To moulder back to kindred dust,
And trace my new and heav'nly birth,
A ransom'd spirit with the just.

And weep not o'er the casket laid
Beneath this little heaped up mound.
The deathless jewel cannot fade,--
A diamond in a Saviour's crown.

An Evening in Our Village.

Why should we wander in the fields of fiction, to cull fancy's flowers to feast a morbid imagination, when there are so many thrilling incidents in the pathway of human life, calculated to awaken the most refined emotions, and stir the deepest currents of the human soul? Would the painter, as he raised his brush to give the last finishing touch to his picture, draw his colors from fancy? Would he not rather imitate the color of the natural rose, copy the forest green, the azure of the sky, or the brilliant hues of the rainbow, as it spans the heavens with its bow of promise?

Fiction may weave her intricate labyrinths and enchain the fancy by wandering in mazy circuits, and weaving her mystic web; but truth will stand in all its primitive lustre, when the foundations of this earth have passed away. Then let me record the truth in preference to fiction.