“I have just been thinking of it, Lucy,” said Burton, one bright spring morning, as they walked together in the garden at the old homestead, “to-morrow is the anniversary of our first fishing excursion. It is an epoch in our lives worth commemorating. Let us, therefore, get up another, as much like it as possible; except, indeed, the upsetting of the canoe—which answered a very good purpose, then, but there would be no occasion for it now. With a little stretch of imagination we can easily go back some years and fancy it to be the same day and the same occasion. You are again the mistress of this beautiful home; troops of friends will again come at our bidding; nature is clad in the same green mantle; the birds sing the same songs; and the waters murmur the same tunes. A kind Providence has also turned our darkness into light. One short hour ago, and yonder mountain was robed in mist to its very base; see, now, how it sparkles in the sunshine! But, Lucy, why are you plucking all those beautiful flowers?” Lucy pointed in silence to a distant enclosure, which contained her father’s grave. A feeling of sadness passed like a shadow over their hearts, reminding them that life is a checkered scene of joy and sorrow. And here we shall leave them, to the indulgence of those contending emotions of regret, gratitude, and bright anticipation. * * * * * A REQUIEM BY THE SEA. BY HELEN IRVING. I hear the sea-waves dashing And roaring on the shore But a voice is in their chorus That I never heard before; A voice whose sound hath power to fill My listening soul with dread— A voice that moans unceasingly, A wail above my dead. Moans of a summer midnight Beneath a foreign sky, When in the hush of murmuring winds, Was heard a last, low sigh— And a noble soul—a soul I loved, Took flight for the starlit heaven, And a noble form—a form I loved, To the starlit deep was given. Cold is the sea, but colder yet Is the brow that its waters lave, And the tide is still in the breast that heaves To the rock of the restless wave: The bloom is gone from his glowing cheek And the love from his pleasant eye, And none there heed on his pallid lips _The smile that could never die_. Oh, I pine, beloved, to hear once more Thy cheerful loving tone, And I pine to feel thy living heart Throb once against mine own! I pine for all thy brother-love, The noble, fond and true— And my soul is weary for the rest That in thy heart it knew.