She called me once to her sleeping place;
A strange wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight,
And she spoke in a low unearthly tone—
The sound from mine ear hath never gone!
"I had last night the loveliest dream:
"My own land shone in the summer beam,
"I saw the fields of the golden grain,
"I heard the reaper's harvest strain;
"There stood on the hills the green pine tree,
"And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.
"A long and a weary way I had come;
"But I stopped, methought, by mine own sweet home.
"I stood by the hearth, and my Father sat there,
"With pale thin face, and snow-white hair!
"The Bible lay open upon his knee,
"But he closed the book to welcome me.
"He led me next where my Mother lay,
"And together we knelt by her grave to pray,
"And heard a hymn it was heaven to hear,
"For it echoed one to my young days dear.
"This dream has waked feelings long, long since fled,
"And hopes which I deemed in my heart were dead!
"—We have not spoken, but still I have hung
"On the northern accents that dwell on thy tongue;
"To me they are music, to me they recall
"The things long hidden by memory's pall!
"Take this long curl of yellow hair,
"And give it my Father, and tell him my prayer,
"My dying prayer, was for him. - - - "
Next day
Upon the deck a coffin lay;
They raised it up, and like a dirge
The heavy gale swept o'er the surge;
The corpse was cast to the wind and wave—
The Convict has found in the green sea a grave.
L. E. L.
