Is it the sound of the wandering breeze, Or the rustling of the grass, Or the stooping wing of the evening birds As home to their nests they pass? No; 'tis a voice like one in dreams, Half solemn and half sad, Freed from the weariness of earth, Not yet with glory clad; Full of the yearning tenderness Which nought but suffering gives; Too sad for angel-tones--too full Of rest for aught that lives. They are the Voices of the Dead From the graves that lie around, And the Monk's heart swells within his breast, As he listens to the sound. "Amen! Amen!" the answer comes Unto his muttered prayer; "Amen!" as though the brethren all In choir were standing there. The living and departed ones On earth are joined again, And the bar that shuts them from his ken For a moment parts in twain. Over the gulf that yawns beneath, Their echoed thanks he hears For the Masses he has offered up, For his orisons and tears. And as the strange responsory Mounts from the church-yard sod, Their mingled prayers and answers rise Unto the throne of God. [1] [Footnote 1: There is a story recorded of St. Birstan, Bishop of Winchester, who died about the year of Christ 944, how he was wont every day to say Mass and Matins for the dead; and one evening, as he walked in the church-yard, reciting his said Matins, when he came to the _Requiescat in Pace_, the voices in the graves round about him made answer aloud, and said, "Amen, Amen!"--_From the "English Martyrology" for October 22_] --_M. R., in "The Lamp," Oct. 31, 1863._ THE CONVENT CEMETERY. REV. ABRAM J. RYAN. [This is an extract from Father Ryan's poem, "Their Story Runneth Thus."] And years and years, and weary years passed on Into the past; one autumn afternoon, When flowers were in their agony of death, And winds sang "_De Profundis_" o'er them, And skies were sad with shadows, he did walk Where, in a resting-place as calm as sweet, The dead were lying down; the autumn sun Was half-way down the west--the hour was three, The holiest hour of all the twenty-four, For Jesus leaned His head on it, and died. He walked alone amid the Virgins' graves, Where calm they slept--a convent stood near by, And from the solitary cells of nuns Unto the cells of death the way was short.