Turning to the past, thine eye Dwells upon a way of flowers— Not a cloud upon the sky ’Neath which passed the happy hours. Clear the vision of the True!— Standing on the verge of Time, See! Hope opens to your view Glories of the better clime! So the past and present life— What the tale the present tells? Childhood—maidenhood—a _wife_— Thus the tide of being swells— Mother! oh all else in this Fade as stars before the sun, Thou the highest point of bliss Yielded to the True hast won. Love—communion—in these words All the happiness we know; Without them the world affords Nought to bind the heart below; “True Affection!” with unrest We the boon demand of all; Vainly seeking, still unblest— Strangers at life’s carnival. Earnest, calm, unchanging love, With no doubt its light to shade— Oh, the happiness above Is but this eternal made! Thou hast found it—in thine eyes, In the eyes that look to thine, As the stars from summer skies Sweetly do we see it shine. Exiles from a better sphere Weary wanderers are we, Doomed ’mid clouds to linger here, Source of bliss, unknowing thee! Save, when from the world apart Thou upon our gloomy way Shinest from a kindred heart, Turning darkness into day! * * * * * THE PERSECUTOR’S DAUGHTER. BY CHARLES J. PETERSON. The last days of November are at hand, and the melancholy woods, shorn of their foliage, stand skeleton-like against the cold, lowering sky; or toss their branches to and fro, with a low moaning sound, in the fitful tempest. Hark! how the gale swells out with the deep voice of a cathedral organ, or dies plaintively away like the cry of a lost child in the forest. The sky is covered with cloud-rifts of a deep, leaden color, only a spot of blue sky being here and there visible; but occasionally the sun, bursting, like a god, from the darkness that encircles him, covers the brown hills with an effulgent glory, while the opposite firmament is lit up with a dull, fiery glow, that has something almost spectral in its aspect. The streams are swollen and discolored, and roll their turbid waters hoarsely onward. Along the fields the brown grass whistles in the wind, and the bare flower-stalks rattle, with a melancholy tone, in the garden. Now and then, drops of rain plash heavily to the ground. The wind comes with a sudden chill to the nerves—the bay is crisped into foam by the fitful gusts—and along the bleak coast the now mountain waves roll in with a hoarse, sullen roar, forewarning us of shipwreck and death. Sad thoughts insensibly possess the mind, and tales of sorrow, that had long been forgot, come up to our memories. One such is even now heavy on our heart—listen! and we will rehearse it.