The lime-trees shade at evening
Is spreading broad and wide;
Beneath their fragrant arches
Pace slowly, side by side,
In low and tender converse,
A Bridegroom and his Bride.
The night is calm and stilly,
No other sound is there
Except their happy voices:—
What is that cold bleak air
That passes through the lime-trees,
And stirs the Bridegroom's hair?
While one low cry of anguish,
Like the last dying wail
Of some dumb, hunted creature,
Is borne upon the gale—
Why dogs the Bridegroom shudder
And turn so deathly pale?
Near Purgatory's entrance
The radiant Angels wait;
It was the great St. Michael
Who closed that gloomy gate,
When the poor wandering spirit
Came back to meet her fate.
"Pass on," thus spoke the Angel:
"Heaven's joy is deep and vast;
Pass on, pass on, poor spirit,
For Heaven is yours at last;
In that one minute's anguish,
Your thousand years have passed."
GENÉRADE, THE FRIEND OF ST. AUGUSTINE.
J. COLLIN DE PLANCY.
ST. AUGUSTINE reckoned among his friends the physician Genérade, highly honored in Carthage, where his learning and skill were much esteemed. But by one of those misfortunes of which there are, unhappily, but too many examples, while studying the admirable mechanism of the human body, he had come to believe matter capable of the works of intelligence which raise man so far above other created beings. He was, therefore, a materialist; and St. Augustine praying for him, earnestly besought God to enlighten that deluded mind.
One night while he slept, this doctor, who believed, as some do still, that "when one is dead, all is dead"—we quote their own language—saw in his dreams a young man, who said to him: "Follow me." He did so, and was conducted to a city, wherein he heard, on the right, unknown melodies, which filled him with admiration. What he heard on the left he never remembered. But on awaking he concluded, from this vision, that there was, somewhere, something else besides this world.