Page:Court and Lady's Magazine (vol 3, 1839).djvu/144

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
134
The Two New Year’s Nights.

band’s woe. He retired to his cabinet, and for some hours lived only to the indulgence of his feelings. The following day his son—his Elisa’s son—was brought to him. The nurse related the last moments of his beloved wife—tears came to his relief—he took the unconscious babe in his arms, and whispered—

“Thy smiling babe comes cheerily—”

then kissed its soft cheek, and once more listened to the consoling accents of friendship.



CHURCHYARD CONTEMPLATIONS.—No. IV.

THE CHURCHYARD DIAL.

BY G. R. CARTER.


“The dial-stone aged and green.”


Lone tenant of this mournful spot!
Thou mark’st the changes of the hour;
And seem’st to breathe o’er things forgot
The unbidden record of thy power.
Sweet sister of the silent gloom,
That lingers in the fretted aisle,
The mouldering wall and nameless tomb
Appear to woo thy quiet smile.

But at thy feet, the starlike flowers,
That gem the verdant robe of Spring,
Alike in sunbeams and in showers,
Their ever-teeming fragrance fling.
The sapphire eye of yonder heaven
Is beaming on thine ancient stone;
But other eyes, at midnight driven,
Come here to watch and weep alone.

The lover looks, with heaving breast,
Upon the shadow as it steals
Along the margin of thy crest
And Time’s departing hand reveals;
He traces in the fleeting hour
The life of her who bloom’d for him,
Ere Death, with unrelenting power,
Around her threw his shadows dim.

The mother wastes her lonely hours,
While sunset lingers on thy face,—
The palest of the weeping flowers
That veil her infant’s resting-place;
The child, entranced beside thy feet,
Beholds the turf profusely spread,
O’er all on earth he deem’d most sweet,—
A mother number’d with the dead!