Oh, For A Home Of Rest!

Oh, for a home of rest! Time lags alone so slow, so wearily; Couldst thou but smile on me, I should be blest. Alas, alas! that never more may be. Oh, for the sky-lark's wing to soar to thee!

This earth I would forsake For starry realms whose sky's forever fair; There, tears are shed not, hearts will cease to ache, And sorrow's plaintive voice shall never break The heavenly stillness that is reigning there.

Life's every charm has fled, The world is all a wilderness to me; "For thou art numbered with the silent dead." Oh, how my heart o'er this dark thought has bled! How I have longed for wings to follow thee!

In visions of the night With angel smile thou beckon'st me away, Pointing to worlds where hope is free from blight; And then a cloud comes o'er that brow of light, Seeming to chide me for my long delay.

1829. E. P. K.

LIFE'S STAGES.

To the heart of trusting childhood life is all a gilded way, Wherein a beam of sunny bliss forever seems to play; It roams about delightedly through pleasure's roseate bower, And gaily makes a playmate, too, of every bird and flower; Holds with the rushing of the winds companionship awhile, And, on the tempest's darkest brow, discerns a brightening smile, Converses with the babbling waves, as on their way they wend, And sees, in everything it meets, the features of a friend. "To-day" is full of rosy joy, "to-morrow" is not here: When, for an uncreated hour, was childhood known to fear? Not until hopes, warm hopes, its heart a treasure-house have made, Like summer flowers to bloom awhile, like them, alas, to fade; Cherished too fondly and too long, for ah! the rich parterre, Crushed in its brightest blossoming, leaves but a desert there.

This is life's second stage; the gloss of springtime has passed o'er, The trusting bosom is deceived, but still it trusts the more; Its young affections are bound up within a mother's love, And oh! if blessings ever yet descended from above And rested on an earthly tie to mark approval given, A mother's love, assuredly, is sanctioned thus by Heaven. But soon the ruthless spoiler comes, and all its trust is vain: The eye that beamed so kindly once, will ne'er unclose again; The voice of love that still could soothe when all its hopes were o'er, Alas! those sweetly sacred tones are hushed forever-more; The smile that lingered round its path when other lights had fled, Oh! can it be that blessed smile is buried with the dead? Then what is left the orphan heart thus mournfully bereft? To call its crushed affections home and count the treasures left, With trembling fear to count them o'er, and bitterly to sigh, Remembering they are earthly too,--they, too, alas, must die.

Perchance of its remaining joys, its fondly garnered things, One may be dearer than the rest--to that it fondly clings; And, resting thus confidingly, it half forgets the woe Which changed the orphan's joyous tones to cadence sad and low. And can the stern destroyer find naught else to call his own That he has stamped his fearful mark upon this chosen one? It boots not to inquire the cause, the why it must be so; "It is his victim," this alone is pain enough to know. What's left thee now, poor orphan heart, that entered life so gay, And fondly dreamed 'twould all have proved a bright and cloudless way? Where are the joys that wreathed thee round in childhood's reckless hours? 'Twas thine to watch them droop and fall, like pale, decaying flowers. Where is thy home of love? Ah! well, that thought may cloud thy brow-- The dear loved home that sheltered thee is claimed by strangers now; And does that echoing hall repeat no well-remembered tone? The stranger's voice, the stranger's step have there familiar grown.

And where the joyous faces now that circled round the hearth? Gone. Are all gone? Then changed indeed, fearfully changed, is earth! Alas! poor desolated heart, what more remains for thee? (A sad and solitary wreck on life's tempestuous sea)-- What but to feel, destroying Time, indeed, has roughly past And blighted fairest dreams of bliss, oh! too, too fair to last; What but to muse on perished joys to which sad memory clings, While pleasure's wrecked and ruined hopes, a mournful band, she brings, Death's trophies, which proclaim his shaft at treasured bliss he threw, And oh! which mournfully disclose his fearful victory too.

Yes, this is life! but life it is without that heavenly ray Which ever throws its purest light upon the stormiest way; Which sweetly gilds the darkest sky and comes like angel voice, (E'en 'mid the wreck of dearest hopes), to bid the heart rejoice; Which flings a smile on sorrow's brow, and sunshine on the tomb, And scatters o'er the bed of death bright buds of deathless bloom. 'Tis true the parting hour will come, "the loved" it cannot save; But it can teach us with a smile to yield them to the grave; To watch with chastened sober bliss the spirit's calm release, Trusting, though life have storms for us, all with the dead is peace. And even while the bosom aches, aches to its inmost core, This heavenly beam can bid it joy that earthly ties are o'er. For oh! our covenant Lord, who ne'er his sacred promise breaks, Has sweetly said, when all the world, the changing world, forsakes, He will be all the world to us; then freely may the heart Resign the fondly coffered bliss that clogs the immortal part, (In holy trust 'twill all be ours when earth has passed away,) And calmly wait the unclouded dawn of an eternal day, Conscious while God is near, earth's best and purest joy is given, For 'tis His holy presence makes the perfect bliss of Heaven.

1829. E. P. K.

SHEPHERD OF ISRAEL.

Shepherd of Israel! o'er Thy fold How sweet Thy guardian care, To them invisible indeed, Yet present everywhere.

Thy crook still points to "pastures green," When rugged paths they see, Beside "still waters" bids them rest, And cast their care on Thee.

The "stranger's voice" thou, Lord, canst teach Their watchful ears to know, And make their "peace," their heavenly peace, Like boundless waters flow.

When round this thorny world we stray And find no place of rest, Then come like "doves unto the ark," Faint, wearied, and oppressed,

Thy gentle hand is soon put forth Each wanderer to receive; Thou bindest up the broken heart, And bidd'st the sinner live.

Why should we fear the storms of time? Thy word their force can stay; Enough, be still! the high behest, Which winds and waves obey.

"Thy will be done" can calm the soul By fearful tempests driven, The holiest anthem sung on earth, The highest heard in Heaven.

1830. E. P. K.

WOODBURN.

Oh, the brow that has never been shaded by care The rosewreath of pleasure may smilingly wear, And the heart that is wholly a stranger to gloom, 'Mid the din of existence may fearlessly bloom; But the one that is blighted by sadness and pain, And blighted too rudely to blossom again, When its hold on a reed-like support is resigned. Nor peace, nor composure, nor solace can find, Nor strength to submit to the chastening rod, Save only in stillness--alone with its God!

And oh! if a blissful communion with Heaven To earth-wearied spirits has ever been given, If the loved and the distant, the lost and the dead, Who smiled on our pathway a moment, and fled, Who darkened our sunshine and saddened our mirth, To prove that the soul has no home upon earth, Are sent in the night-time of gloom and distress, As heralds of mercy to comfort and bless, To place, while the tempest is fearfully loud, The bright bow of peace on the dark thundercloud, To whisper of purer and holier ties, Of a land where the blossom of joy never dies-- Such tidings to welcome, oh! where shall we flee, If not, dearest Woodburn, to silence and thee?

For ah! did the angel of peace over roam, On an errand of love, from her own hallowed home, To gladden a sin-blighted world for awhile, Make the desert rejoice and the wilderness smile, She has certainly paused in her holy career, And closed up her pinions delightfully here. Dear to me are thy shades, when no sound may be heard Save the soul-soothing strains of thy harmonist bird, For they seem on the soft wing of quiet to come, Like celestial melodies luring us home, Faint breathings from Heaven, to bid us prepare For peals of ethereal minstrelsy there.

But oh! when day rests on the portals of eve, As though loath the bright scene of enchantment to leave, While its drapery of gold, hurried carelessly on, Fades away, tint by tint, till at last all are gone, I feel 'tis an emblem of life's little hour, (Thus perish the hues of hope's loveliest flower), And I sigh for repose on that heavenly shore Where the day is eternal, and change is no more.

1830. E. P. K.