44 HARK HOW THE POET SINGS. ment that he should soon be beneath them. We did not disturb him, but quietly passed in another direction. It was in the afternoon of a day in the early autumn, and Robert and I were strolling across the fields; he was leaning on me, for he had become so weak as to be unable to walk far without help. For several weeks he had been confined to the house, from no particular disease, however; but it was evident that he was gradually passing away; and as his physical strength failed, his mind became proportionably stronger. There was no indication of his relapsing into lunacy; but he grew more gentle-more ethereal; so unlike anything earthly, that it seemed as though he had prematurely put on immortality. In It is painful to watch the slow approach of death to the young-the buds of hope and promise sinking into the cold embrace of the grave; but in this case regret was lessened by the melancholy circumstances attending his fate. deed, death was far preferable to the semi-existence he had known. On this day he had asked me to take him near the church-yard--to look once more on the grave of his childhood's love. As we drew near the place a change became visible in his appearance, and, looking up at the sun, he said, "The sunbeam will soon be on the grave, and it will very soon be on mine." "Why," I said, "are you always thinking of sunbeams? It would be better to discourage such thoughts." "Discourage the thought of Janette!" he said, looking at me, reproachfully; she is the sunbeam of my thoughts--she is the sunbeam itself it has been all a night to me without it. They thought me mad, but I was not mad. I felt that it was one weary, weary night-and I longed for the morning to break. Are they all mad who watch and pray for the day-spring? It is coming now. I know it-I feel it. It was whispered to me when I last sat by Janette's grave-it spoke in the sunbeam that, like me, loves the spot--the last farewell beam that kisses the rose which blooms over her heart. Tell me not to think no more of sunbeams; I have lived and I shall die in a sunbeam." There was a melancholy tenderness in his voice that went to the heart, and mine was so full that I could not reply. So we walked on in silence until we reached the gate, when he felt exhausted, and sat down, completely overcome with fatigue. The change that I had before observed in his looks became more apparent; I was too young to understand the indications, or I might have known that death was placing a mark on his victim. After a few minutes he spoke, but it was scarcely above a whisper. His desire was to reach the grave, and after much difficulty I placed him on his favorite spot; and, becoming alarmed at his increasing weakness, ran back to his mother's cottage; and, having told her where he was, hastened to the house of Mr. Bray, and we went back together. His mother was already there, and was sitting on the grave with Robert's head in her lap. Alas! how great a change had taken place in that short time! It was proposed to convey him home, but he looked so imploringly as he asked them to let him die there, that a reluctant assent was given, and I was dispatched for the clergyman. The sun was just descending behind the willow trees, and throwing his beams through the opening opposite the grave, when I returned with the minister. He The dying boy beckoned me to his side, for his mother was weeping bitterly; and, pointing to the sun, and then to a particular spot near him, whispered, "Move me there!" They did so, and the minister knelt by him and prayed. seemed to watch him with much anxiety, and once whispered, "It will soon be there." At length the shadows on the grave increased, the sunbeams gradually withdrew, and as the last one lingered on the rose that grew above the heart of Janette, he gave me one look and faintly smiling died, as he had predicted, "in a sunbeam." "HARK! HOW THE POET SINGS." HARK! how the poet sings, Whom grief is wearing; Like as the flower springs Into full bearing. Where amid old decay Fine skill has laid it; Even so the poet's lay; His woes have made it. THE SEA. HAIL, thou inexhaustible source of wonder and contemplation! Hail, thou multitudinous ocean, whose waves chase one another down, like the generations of men; and, after a momentary space, are immerged forever in oblivion! Thy fluctuating waters wash the varied shores of the world, and while they disjoin nations, whom a nearer connection would involve in eternal war, they circulate their arts and their labors, and give health and plenty to mankind. How glorious, how awful, are the scenes which thou displayest! whether we view thee when every wind is hushed, when the morning sun silvers the level line of the horizon, or when its evening track is marked with flaming gold, and thy unruffled bosom reflects the radiance of the over-arching heavens! or whether we behold thee in thy terrors, when the black tempest sweeps thy swelling billows, and the boiling surge mixes with the clouds, when death rides in the storm, and humanity drops a fruitless tear for the toiling mariner whose heart is sinking with dismay! And yet, mighty deep! it is thy surface alone we view! Who can penetrate the secrets of thy wide domain? What eye can visit thy immense rocks and caverns, that teem with life and vegetation or search out the myriads of objects whose beauties lie scattered over the dread abyss? The mind staggers with the immensity of its conceptions, when it contemplates the flux and reflux of thy tides, which, from the beginning of the world, were never known to err. How do we shrink at the idea of that Divine Power, which originally laid thy foundations so sure, and whose omnipotent voice has fixed the limits where thy proud waves shall be stayed! Oh, I shall not forget until memory depart, As I stood on its margin, or roamed on its strand, It is thine to awaken that tenderest thrill It is not a feeling of gloom or distress, For if ever to mortals sensations are given, Though while in these mansions of clay we must dwell, A sense of His greatness, whose might and whose will, THE YELLOW CHURCH OF ELLINGTON. BY REV. SAMUEL IRENEUS PRIME. FRAGRANT and fresh are the memories of that country parish in which I was born, and where I grew up toward manhood, and where I should like to die and be buried. As I grow older, and the frosts of life's winter cover me, and I think that the clods must soon lie on me, I begin to feel as one of the early pastors of a New England city did when he saw his end approaching. He had been settled, in early life, over a parish some miles distant, and his heart was bound up in that people of his charge, as with a first and only love; and he begged his friends to carry him back and let him die there. They told him that he was too weak to be moved, and that he would be injured by the exposure; but he would listen to no arguments; he would go and die where his heart was, and they put a bed into a cart, and the old, dying pastor on the bed, and carried him home, and he was laid in his grave. There is no place like home; and there is no home but where the young heart has made itself a haunt, and gathered its warm affections as in a garner. You may go the world over, and get the riches and honors that the earth gives, and bring them all about your new habitation, and call it home, and think you are happy in it; but the heart will yearn for the homely house, and the green hillside, and the murmuring brook, and the pine grove, and the pleasant walks of childhood and youth; they are all fresh and perennial, and will never be forgotten while memory is true to her precious trust. Of course there were all sorts of people in that country congregation; and I have thought I should find a melancholy pleasure in taking my pen and drawing sketches in ink of some of them, as they now appear to me, after the lapse of so many years. I must say something of the place itself, the church, the pastor, and the ways of doing things up there; and then I shall be ready to speak of the people, and the scenes of varied interest which I have passed through, and which have been witnessed in that retired but eventful place. I shall try to avoid the mistake of sup posing that everybody else takes the same interest in matters personal to myself that I do; and shall therefore avoid many incidents that have a charm to me, but others may not regard of any importance. There is, however, a "touch of nature" about scenes in the country that makes us brothers, and there are facts in the annals of the old town that will reach a chord in all hearts that love nature, and the way they do things a couple of hundred miles from the city. The town of Ellington is in the northern part of the state of; and must have been cold in winter and cool in summer; a place where a hardy race of men and fair women may live, and the manly virtues with brave constitutions flourish, more freely than we find them in sunnier climes. The mountains lie around it as they do about Jerusalem; and the glorious illustration in the Psalms was always read with peculiar force from the pulpit of the old yellow KIRK, as many of the Scotch people loved to call it, in memory of old times in a far away land. A pleasant stream, by way of dignity called the river, wound its way among the hills, and watered the lovely meadows of that charming valley; the fine farms stretching up from its banks to the sides of the hills, and even these were year by year becoming cleared by the ascending husbandmen, who found the soil more profitable for corn than timber. Those were honest, good men, those farmers, and they feared God and honored Him in their ways. One of them I have in mind this moment; a good man and true, whose uprightness became a proverb, and it was common to hear the remark when one would assure another of his own integrity in dealing, "I will be as fair in this matter as Mr. Norton would be," and this was one of the strongest guaranties. There was a short crop of corn one season, (not a very rare occurrence in that northern climate,) and the price of the article rose considerably in market. • Mr. Norton sold to those who would transport it to the city, and took the market price, but to the poorer people, the day-laborers and others around him who had no more ability to meet the increased price than they had to meet a harder THE YELLOW CHURCH OF ELLINGTON. 47 winter, he put the grain as in former years, and made no merit or mention of it. He did it as a matter of course, and would have thought very meanly of himself if he had taken advantage of the necessities of his neighbors. Very many will say this is nothing; but very few would have done as farmer Norton did, however they may undervalue the generous way of the farmer when they see it in another. But, speaking of farmer Norton brings to mind, and I would not have forgotten, if I had forgotten him, that there was a daughter of his, whose loveliness and fate have made a deeper impression on the pages of my memory than almost any other of the young people of Ellington. We were young together, and my first memories of her are when we went to the district school and stood up in the same class to recite. That was the way up there, however strange it may sound to those who have no other idea of the mode of education than a fashionable boarding-school offers. Ellen Norton was a fair girl and a smart one; so that in the class where we took our places according to merit, those who recited best were up at the head of the class, and the order of the rest exhibited their comparative success; so Ellen had a double advantage. She was a general favorite, and every one wished her to be above the rest, and she was so bright a scholar that she would easily have taken the lead in spite of the best of them. I was very fond of being next to the head, when she was quite there. No doubt I studied all the more for that, so that it was a good thing for me that Ellen was smart, as it served as a stimulus to me, that ambition to be above the others would not have supplied. Then I remember Ellen grown up to seventeen, at a prayer-meeting, thoughtful and serious; and on the way to her home one evening, she told me that she had been thinking much of death lately, and the need of religion whether we live or die. It was wonderful to me that one so young, so innocent and lovely, should talk of dying, and more that she should want to be any better. I told her so. How she sighed as I spoke! It seemed as if I had pierced her heart with a sud den pang. You know," she said, "that we have sinful hearts, and that we are inclined to evil. I have struggled against the inclinations of mine; but I feel that it is very, very wicked, and that while it remains so, I cannot enjoy God nor heaven." This was all strange to me, for though I had heard the gospel in the old kirk, and had been trained up in the straitest sect of the orthodox, I had never felt as this gentle girl now felt, and I reasoned very properly that if one of so much purity and loveliness of character was accusing herself of sinfulness, there was far more reason for me to be thinking of my own condition. And Ellen hinted at this necessity, not by way of the contrast with herself, which my own conscience was making, but from a strong desire, which she was not ashamed to express, that I should set out with her to seek the pearl of great price. I hope we both found it; and for many years of time, I know not how they reckon in heaven, Ellen Norton has been in glory, an angel there; and if they are the brightest and happiest in heaven who were the purest and best on earth, she must be among the nearest to the throne. She was nineteen when her health failed. Her friends thought she was growing more beautiful, as the blushing rose faded from her cheeks, and the lily took its place. She was not less cheerful, and she was even more active in her walks of usefulness, which she took like an angel of mercy among the abodes of the poor and the sorrowing. Blessings on you! a thousand blessings on you!" it was common for them to say as she gave them her fair hand on rising from her knees to take leave, and when the door was closed they would add with a sigh, "but she is too good for this world; she won't live long." This is a common saying in the country among the humbler classes, who have the pleasing superstition that the Latins expressed in the sweet line, "Whom the gods love, die young." We have all noticed it: not that early virtue ripens for the grave; but when God will take a flower to bloom in his garden, he transplants it in the morning, in the dew of its youth. He trains the young for his service and enjoyment, and then takes them to his presence, where there is fullness of joy. Ellen was thus trained. Her heart was all alive to the wants of others; and in the cottages of the poor, and especially among the sick, she loved to be like him who went about doing good. It was a sight that I am sure the angels lingered over, and God himself contemplated with delight, when Ellen Norton stood up in the aisle of the church, and was received as a member of its holy communion. In the summer season, the windows and doors of the church were open, and the pleasant air was softly finding its way through the aisles; a calmness like that of heaven rested on the minds of the simple, pious people gathered there, and Ellen, alone in front of the sacred desk, stood up, in her beauty and gentleness, so pure, so lovely; and when she answered the solemn questions proposed to her by the man of God, and gave the promises he required, a vision of glory passed over her brow, as 48 THE YELLOW CHURCH OF ELLINGTON. if a shining spirit had rested there a moment, and then flew away to heaven. There were some who thought then she looked as if she were fitted rather for another world than this, and that she would be there before many years should pass. A sad foreboding, but prompted more by love than fear! And even then a watchful eye might have detected signs of early and premature decay. The flush of her cheek was too bright, and her eye was lighted with more lustre than a quiet spirit like hers should inspire; yet to those who could not think of her but with the love that we bestow on an infant, these were the evidences of her health and hope. Alas! for these hopes, that consumption almost always raises, when he comes to do his cowardly, murderous work! They are hopes that are kindled only to be extinguished. I have read in books of the beauty of death; but it was never visible to me except when permitted, as I was, to see Ellen Norton die. Her sickness was long, but not painful. The destroyer was compelled to deal gently with her, if there can be gentleness in wasting one's strength away, eating out the heart and stealing away the life-blood of one whom affection, and tears, and prayers in vain attempt to shield from the ravages of disease. Yet so gradually did she wear away, and so soft were the footsteps of the messenger as he came to her chamber, that from day to day you would not observe the difference in her health, though she was steadily sinking to the tomb. "I am dying," she said, one day, to her mother. "Oh no, you are not, my dear child; I think you look better to-day than you did yesterday," replied her tender mother, as she moistened her lips and kissed them. "I feel that I am dying," Ellen continued, with no emotion that one standing by could observe; "there is a sinking at my heart, and a faintness comes over me. But I do not fear. There is so much more of love to the Saviour in my soul now than I ever felt before, that I feel as if I I would like to be with him where he is, and see him face to face." "But you are leaving us; and we shall never see you again," sobbed the mother. "Never! oh yes, you will; we shall meet soon, and then we shall never part-never-never.” At this point her good old pastor came in, a kind-hearted man, who had known and loved her from infancy, and had kissed her a thousand times in her childhood. Every day in his walks he had called in to see her since she had been confined to her room, and now, as he entered, he smiled Going, Ellen; going where, my child?" he said, with a trembling voice. "Going to Christ," she answered; " and I shall soon be with him." There was silence deep and tearful for some minutes; the good pastor knelt by the bedside, and in earnest, strong petitions, poured out his desires that Ellen might yet live, if it were the Father's will; and when he added, "Nevertheless not our will, but thine, O God be done," a soft amen was heard from the lips of the dying. Her parents, and brothers, and sisters, and another who loved her more than any of them, were around her, and she took her leave of them more calmly than for an absence of a week, and begged them to think of her as always near, and to be happy in the thought that she was happy in the Saviour's presence and love. That night, as the sun went down, she ceased to breathe. Her dying was only going to sleep as if for the night, with a morning near; it is not far off, I trust, the morning of her awaking. The church-yard in which we laid her was just in the rear of the old yellow church; a wide field embracing some three or four acres of land, that had been used for two generations as a burial place. It was an amusement for the boys to hunt among the tomb-stones for the earliest dates, and none were found more than fifty years back of the time in which we were living and dying. But some of the epitaphs were very curious, showing that in former times they had notions of propriety quite as diverse from ours, as ours will appear to those who live fifty years hence. I remember one that we used to be very fond of reading, on a stone in the centre of the grounds: "Here lyeth the bones of Jacob Middlefield, who dyed December 9, 1789, in the 20 yere of his age. He loved evry one, and evry body loved him, and God took him early. He was laid in the middle of this field to rest till the resurrection morn." It was a sad day, when we entered this sacred enclosure, to commit to its kindred dust the remains of Ellen Norton. The whole town had gathered, drawn by a common interest to the house of mourning, and anxious to speak, by their presence and sympathy, their love of her who was to be buried. Eight young men bore the |