A strain--a mellow strain-- A wailing sweetness filled the sky; The stars, lamenting in unborrowed pain, That one of their selectest ones must die! Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest! Alas! 'tis evermore our destiny, The hope, heart-cherished, is the soonest lost; The flower first budden, soonest feels the frost: Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest? And, like the pale star shooting down the sky, Look they not ever brightest when they fly The desolate home they blessed? WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. * * * * * PASSING AWAY. Was it the chime of a tiny bell That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light. And he his notes as silvery quite. While the boatman listens and ships his oar, To catch the music that comes from the shore? Hark! the notes on my ear that play Are set to words; as they float, they say, "Passing away! passing away!" But no; it was not a fairy's shell. Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear; Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell, Striking the hour, that filled my ear, As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime That told of the flow of the stream of time. For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing); And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say, "Passing away! passing away!" Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow; And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung This way and that, as she, dancing, swung In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride, That told me she soon was to be a bride; Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, In the same sweet voice I heard her say, "Passing away! passing away!"