"Tis sweet, when year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
How grows in Paradise our store!"—KEBLE.

His Birthday! but to-night there is no gladness,
As in the bright old days forever flown;
And in my heart one aching thought of sadness
Seems ever whispering, Alone! Alone!

The darkness gathers round, and, wan and olden,
The worn day paler grows, and dies away,
And all life's light and brightness now seem folden
Beneath the twilight's dusky mantle gray.

The old church tower, amid the shadows looming,
Stands grim and sombre in the dying light;
The trees with leafless branches shiver, moaning,
As the sad winds sigh softly through the night.

Weird looks the ruined church, where ivy creeping
Decks the old walls fast mouldering in decay;
And peace rests o'er the graves in whose calm keeping,
In quiet safety, sleeps the treasured clay.

Here in this corner, where his grave is lying,
The fir trees throw deep shade, and soft and low,
When summer eve or winter day is dying,
The winds seem ever sighing songs of woe!

Oh! cherished spot! beloved beyond all measure,
Your holy peace that brings a balm so blest!
When turning from the world, in grief or pleasure,
I seek your calm, and hunger for your rest!

How feeble, then, seem all the ties that bound me
To this world's ways, that held such charms for me
And heaven-born dreams and holy thoughts surround me
Until from earth's vain things my soul is free!

Then do I feel this wound of Mercy's giving
Draws all my hopes from earth to holier love.
An e'en while here, sin-stained and lonely living,
My heart is with my treasure fixed above!

Still, looking upward to the Heavenly Mansion,
Where he abides—where we shall meet him there—
Where soul with soul shall blend in the expansion
Of that world's higher life, immortal, fair!

That land of beauty, where the Lamb in glory
Gathers His own to perfect bliss and peace,
Where all the ransomed sing Redemption's story
In joys celestial that can never cease.

Thrice happy lot was thine, oh, blessed spirit!
So early called from this dark vale of woe—
From chequered scenes of warfare—to inherit
That perfect love that God's own favoured know.

Then could we wish thee back to dwell with mortals
And bear those storms that toss Time's troubled sea?
No! from that home beyond the pearly portals
Thou canst not come, but we will go to thee!

IN MEMORIAM

OF

R. A. WILSON, ESQ.,

EDITOR OF THE BELFAST MORNING NEWS.

Fair vales of Ulster! in the noontide smiling,
Blue Northern mountains, frowning to the sky;
Rivers that flow along, with song beguiling
The summer day your beauties, too, must die!

Know ye no requiem? Ah! streamlets borrow
Your tones from tearful voices! Mountains blue,
O'er your high heads let heavy clouds of sorrow
Tell that ye mourn the death of Patriot true.

Erin! green Erin! let your great heart feel it!
Bid all your sons and daughters, fair and brave,
By dropping tears and mourning faces tell it,
As they place laurels on a new-made grave!

Lowly he lies to day? Death's deep, calm slumber
Has claimed another of our cherished ones;
As he, the talented, ranks with the number
Of Erin's lost, best-loved—her gifted sons!

"Barney Maglone" is dead! Let the winds sighing
On their fleet wings, bear far the wail of woe
To every land. Let them in wild, sad crying
Tell out to all the sorrow that we know.

Our Poet, and not all Westminster's glory
Could ever give him half so loved a grave
As this green mound, with simple cross, whose story
Shall live 'mong annals of our gifted brave!

Methinks that far among old Ireland's mountains
I hear the breezes sing a sad dirge, low,
Wild, and yet soft, with tears from many fountains
And murmuring riven wailing in their flow.

The grand old woods, with leafy branches waving,
Mingle their many harps in one refrain,
Blent with the waves, whose foam our coast is laving,
Rolling afar, weeping aloud the strain—

Waters and wondrous deep,
Mountains and valleys;
Woodlands and heathery steep,
Lone greenwood alleys,

Sound the long wail of woe,
Tell the news, sad and low,
Let all the wide world know
Of the loved, lost one!

Waves of deep, boundless sea,
Boiling for ever free,
Tell through the time to be
Of the bright, lost one!

Erin, whose bosom green,
His own, his loved shrine has been,
Feel the woe thou hast seen
For the true, lost one!

His land, in weal or woe,
In dark gloom or sunny glow,
Do all Ireland's great ones know
Such zeal as this lost one?

Bright dreams! ah, how fleeting
Was his life's fair story!
Swift, swift was the meeting
Of Death, with earth's glory!

Unrivalled in splendour
His sky was at morning,
Still brightening, its grandeur
His noonday adorning.

But a dark cloud rose glooming,
Ah, me! 'twas Death's shadow!
It chilled the heat blooming
Of hillside or meadow!

Oh, waters and wondrous deep,
Mountains and valleys,
Woodlands and heathery steep,
Lone greenwood alleys—

Sound the weird wail of woe,
Tell the news sad and low,
Let all the wide world knew
Of Erin's best lost one!