THE SPECTRE OF THE HEARTH. BY FRANCES BROWN. Old Europe boasts of the broad low lands She won from the western main; But the wasting wave and the whelming sands Long and fierce is the war they wage And the conquest groweth from age to age. The song of the billows' sounding march, And fills the waste of the sterile shore, No trace doth the bare, gray summit keep But still, 'tis said, where the drifted heap Lies high o'er a peasant's home, The place of the hearth may yet be known For there, when stars through the deep'ning gray, Shine far over wave and height, Or their crests give back the ruddy ray Of the hamlet-fires of night, A spectre-woman pours her woe O'er the cold and the quench'd of long ago. Old is the tale--aye, old and strange As the peasant's lore of dreams; Yet how hath it kept through fear and change In the power of its undecaying proof, Are there not hearts-the worn, the wise- To some spot where their old love-memory lies, The dust and the debris piled between Their souls and the rest they might have seen! The sands! oh, the severing sands upflung And the lights that shine on its lonely ways, The winters wane, and the ruins grow How many a dream by the hearth might rest, THE LONELY MOTHER. BY FRANCES BROWN. My home is not what it hath been, When the leaves of other years were green, Though its hearth is bright and its chambers fair, And the summer beams fall lightly there; But they fall no more on the clear, young eye, And the lip of pleasant song, And the gleaming night that wont to lie Oh, pleasant is the voice of youth, O'er evening prayer and page; But woe for the hearth that heareth nought The glow is gone from our winter blaze, And the light hath pass'd from our summer days; And our dwelling hath no household now But the sad of heart and the gray of brow. For the young lies low 'neath the church-yard tree, But a wakening music seems to flow As thy babe's first words come sweet and clear Ere thine eye grew dim with tears or pain, Alas! for the widow'd eyes that trace What after-light will his memory mark, Like the dove that in spring-time sought her ark For long in that far and better land Were her spirit's treasures laid; And she might not stay from its golden strand But woe for her on whose path may shine The light of no mother's love but mine; Oh, well if that lonely path lead on To the land where her mother's steps have gone The land where the aged find their youth, Oh! safe, my child, from both time and death- THE FRIEND OF OUR DARKER DAYS. BY FRANCES BROWN. "Twas said, when the world was fresh and young, That the friends of earth were few; And shrines have blazed, and harps have rung, And say, when the furrowing tracks of time It may be found, like the aloe's bloom In the depth of western woods, But if, through the mists of wintry skies, What star in the summer heavens will rise We know there are hands and smiles to greet But lone are the climber's weary feet, Where the steep lies bleak and bare. For some have gain'd far heights and streams, But the sunrise shed on their hearts' first dreams, Yet, O for the bright isles seen afar, When our sails were first unfurl'd, And the glance that once was the guiding star Of our green unwithered world! And, O for the voice that spake in love, Ere we heard the cold world's praise; Alas! we have missed pure gems that lay And dark is the night of changing years Till the thorns grow up and the tangled tares In the stronghold of its truth. The shrines of our household gods, perchance But still from the graves of better hopes- WE ARE GROWING OLD. BY FRANCES BROWN. We are growing old-how the thought will rise On some long-remembered spot that lies It may be the shrine of our early vows, But it seems like a far-off isle to us, In the stormy sea of years. |