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THE BURIAL AT SEA.

And life's most holy feeling strung
To sing him unto death!

And on his daughter's stainless breast
The dying Hebrew found his rest.

THE BURIAL AT SEA.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

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SPARE him one little week, Almighty Power! Yield to his father's house his dying hour; Once more, once more let them who hold him dear But see his face, his faltering voice but hear; We know, alas! that he is marked for death, But let his mother watch his parting breath; O, let him die at home!

It could not be!

At midnight, on a dark and stormy sea,
Far from his kindred and his native land,
His pangs unsoothed by tender woman's hand,
The patient victim in his cabin lay,

And meekly breathed his blameless life away.

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Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear,

His body to the deck they slowly bear;

How eloquent, how awful in its power,
The silent lecture of death's Sabbath-hour!
One voice that silence breaks,—the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid;
The flashing waters mark his resting-place,
And fold him round in one long, cold embrace;
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;
Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep,
With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep.

Rest, loved one, rest,- beneath the billow's swell,

Where tongue ne'er spoke, where sunlight never fell;

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Rest, till the God who gave thee to the deep Rouse thee, triumphant, from the long, long sleep. And you, whose hearts are bleeding, who deplore That ye must see the wanderer's face no more, Weep,- he was worthy of the purest grief; Weep,—in such sorrow ye shall find relief; While o'er his doom the bitter tear ye shed, Memory shall trace the virtues of the dead; These cannot die, — for you, for him, they bloom, And scatter fragrance round his ocean tomb.

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SUGGESTED BY THE DECEASE OF THE REV. MR. WRIGHT OF BOSTON, MISSIONARY AT LIBERIA, WITH HIS LADY, IN 1833; BOTH IN THE BLOOM OF YOUTH.

B. B. THATCHER.

WEEP not for him! He but rose to his rest From his own dear land of the fervid line, With the silvery sheaves of his dawn all gleaned Ere bright dews blazoned his noon's decline. He shall toil with tears in the gloom of a dim, Lone harvest no more: O weep not for him!

And weep not for her! They have laid the dust Of the early exile so softly away,

In the pleasant shade of the plantain-tree,

That the Judgment Angels, who seek that day

The jewels of glory, will scarcely stir

So sweet a slumber: weep not for her!

Weep not! In the clime where the sinless meet,
Lingers no lonely yearning for this,-
As the pilgrims mourned (and smiled the while)
In dreams,* o'er the visions of vanished bliss.
No sorrow enters that radiant realm,

No mourning, nor yearning: O weep not for them!

*Alluding to a passage in Mr. Wright's Journal of his Voyage to Liberia.

TO MY FRIEND, ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER.

J. G. WHITTIER.

THINE is a grief, the depth of which another
May never know;

Yet o'er the waters, O my stricken brother!
To thee I go.

I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding
Thy hand in mine,

With even the weakness of my soul upholding The strength of thine.

I never knew, like thee, the dear departed;
I stood not by

When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted
Lay down to die.

And on thy ear my words of weak condoling
Must vainly fall :

The funeral bell which in thy heart is tolling
Sounds over all!

I will not mock thee with the poor world's common And heartless phrase,

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the memory of a sainted woman
With idle praise.

ON THE DEATH OF A SISTER.

With silence only as their benediction
God's angels come,

Where in the shadow of a great affliction
The soul sits dumb!

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Yet would I say what thy own heart approveth:
Our Father's will,

Calling to him, the dear one whom he loveth,
Is mercy still.

Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel
Hath evil wrought:
Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel
The good die not!

God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly What He hath given;

They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly As in His heaven.

And she is with thee. In thy path of trial
She walketh yet.

Still with the baptism of thy self-denial
Her locks are wet.

Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest Lie white in view!

She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest

To both is true.

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