A Leaf from the Old Forest

by John D. Cossar

IN REMEMBRANCE.

O memory of a mother gone!
Whene’er with others, or alone,
I hear or breathe that sacred name,
May it allure the hallowed flame
To shine on thee, and lead thy son
Into a better life, begun
Unworthy that which hath been done.
For him and all, and us anon,
In course of life I hear the knell
Of mournful, solemn funeral bell,
Or see the deep black drapings flow

Of funeral cortege moving slow.
Or, when the sombre weeds I don,
May they of warning not be lone,
But freely tell, in solemn truth,
The waning of my boasted youth;
That ere a while those rites shall be
Obsequies fashioned over me.
Then heedless, hasty spirit, pause
To learn and know the better cause
Wherefore ye live, and freely ask
Of wisdom for a fitter task.

TO THE OBSERVER.

Pause, cold observer, pause awhile;
Why will not death thy thoughts beguile?
Think ye for ever to abide
By this deluding desert side?
O wanderer, turn;
O wanderer, stay;
Why will ye spurn
The voice to-day?
A little while—
An hour—may bring
A broken smile,
Death on the wing,

To bear thee down
By laden grief
Beneath his frown.
The time is brief.
Then stay, oh stay!
And lend an ear
To what the dead—
The dying say.
Thy doom is hid,
Thy death is near;
The Judge will bid
Thee soon appear.

THE WORLD’S END.

The gates of heaven are opened, and, behold,
The herald comes upon the wings of night,
When men in slumber lie, and when abroad
The robber goes to plunder what he can;
And when the lusty have gone forth to cull
A night’s defilement in an evil way;
The gambler sitteth at his dizzy game,
The sotted drunkard feeds his bestial thirst,
And revel dancers are aloud in mirth.
Alike the heedless and the godly sleep,
When from the herald’s waking trumpet comes
The awful and sonorous cadence, which
Shall roll around the earth from pole to pole—
More grand, more great, and more tremendous than
The voice of terror in the stormy sky,
As when a thousand thunders war therein
An angry war among the heavy clouds.
And at the sound the wicked tremble sore,
For now they know an awful doom at hand,
And quail to find no rescue from its power.
The robber drops the plunder from his hand;

The lusty startle at the mighty sound,
And from their beds of sin turn wildly forth;
And from his game the gambler leaps amazed
And terror-struck; whereas the drunkard wakes—
The sotted drunkard—from his stupid sleep,
And feels the awful terrors of the hour.
But by the righteous is the sound received
As the glad tidings which they long have sought;
For well they know the glory of the sign,
When He, their true Deliverer, shall come.
The earth shall tremble and rebound, and all
The graves shall ope their darkened mouths, until
The long-forgotten dead shall come therefrom.
Then He who is the Judge appears forth from
The heavenly gates; upon the lurid flame
His chariot shall roll, and on the clouds
Of sable smoke, down through the stormy sky,
Where roar tremendous thunders, mid the cries
Of agony and fear, which rise anon,
Heartrending, from the lost, in anguish sore,
Who call for shelter, but have no reply,
Save terrors still more awful than before;
Who seek for mercy, when their fearful doom
Shall echo in their ear, “Too late! too late!”
Then all the earth shall be engrossed in flame
From sea to sea, and high the lurid glare

Shall rise in streams amid the gloomy clouds;
And the great waters, laving on the flame
Their boiling waves, shall feed its power ten times,
And lend their vapors to the burning air.
All things shall be consumed excepting man;
And through the flames the righteous shall be led
Unhurt, as though there were no flame; whereas
The wicked shall of tortures be conceived
More deep in power than ever known before.
Then on His throne, mid glories so immense,
The Judge in dreadful majesty appears,
And looks in thrilling calm on all around.
And on His brow sits equity enthroned,
And truth and love united with it there;
So radiant is His presence that, unveiled,
The eye is dazzled which upon it dwells.
He calls before Him all the people, and
Discerns between the evil and the good
Of all the deeds which they have done, and weighs
Together in a balance, one in one,
The evil and the good of all their thoughts,
And all their words and mingled purposes.
Then they to whom the balance falls to ill
Their judgment thus receive: “Depart, depart
Unto the burning lake, for ever fed.
Ye would not hearken to the warning words,