For many a year--but they all are flown,
The band is broken, and hushed each tone,
And voices that mingled in tuneful breath,
Are silent now in the hush of death!
Scattered like Autumn-leaves far and near
Are those who clustered together here,--
Gone, like flowers in the swift stream cast,
Like wandering birds when the summer's past,
Like perfume shed in the tempest's track,
Never again to be gathered back!
I am thinking now of a young, fair face,
A brow of beauty, a form of grace,
The tender tones of whose sweet voice long
Swelled richly forth in our Sabbath-song;
But she laid her own, in a loved one's hand,
And he led her forth to a distant land,
Where a home, all radiant with love's pure beam,
Fulfilled her girlhood's enraptured dream;--
Yet she only pined 'neath the stranger's sky,
And he brought her back to her own--to die!
The breath of Spring-time was on the plain,
And flowers were bursting to life again,
And birds were carolling full and free
On the leafy boughs of the forest tree,
When the sweetest voice in our tuneful throng
Faltered and failed from our choral song,
And we laid her down at her pure life's close,
Peaceful and pale in her last repose.
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