Why has the Lady left her home,
  And quitted every earthly care,
  And sought, in deep monastic gloom,
  The holy balm that centres there? 
  Oh! ill that Lady’s eye could brook
  On those deserted scenes to look,
  Where she so oft had marked her child,
  With all a mother’s joy and smiled,
  For not a shrub, or tree or flower,
  But brought to mind some happy hour,
  And called to life some vision fair. 
  When her young hope stood smiling there.

  But he was gone! and what had she
  To do with love, or hope, or pride,
  For every feeling, warm and free,
  Had left her when young Duncan died;
  And she had nought on earth beside. 
  One single throb was lingering yet,
  And that forbade her to forget;
  Forget! what spell can calm the soul? 
  Should memory o’er its pulses roll
  Through almost every night of grief,
  We still hope for the morrow;
  But what to those can bring relief,
  Who pine in endless sorrow.

  —­EMMA TUCKER.

LINES WRITTEN ON THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.

  Sad solitary thought! that keeps thy vigils,
  Thy solemn vigils in the sick man’s mind;
  Communing lonely with his sinking soul,
  And musing on the dim obscurity around him! 
  Thee! rapt in thy dark magnificence, I call
  At this still midnight hour, this awful season,
  When on my bed in wakeful restlessness,
  I turn me, weary:  while all around,
  All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness,
  I only wake to watch the sickly taper that lights,
  Me to my tomb.  Yes, ’tis the hand of death
  I feel press heavy on my vitals;
  Slow sapping the warm current of existence;
  My moments now are few! e’en now
  I feel the knife, the separating knife, divide
  The tender chords that tie my soul
  To earth.  Yes, I must die, I feel that I must die
  And though to me has life been dark and dreary
  Though smiling Hope, has lured but to deceive,
  And disappointment still pursued its blandishments,
  Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me,
  As I contemplate the grim gulf,—­

  The shuddering blank, the awful void futurity. 
  Aye, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme,
  Romantic schemes and fraught with loveliness;
  And it is hard to feel the hand of death
  Arrest one’s steps; throw a chill blast
  O’er all one’s budding hopes, and hurl one’s soul
  Untimely to the grave, lost in the gaping gulf
  Of blank oblivion.  Fifty years hence,
  And who will think of Henry? ah, none! 
  Another busy world of beings will start up
  In the interim, and none will hold him
  In remembrance.  I shall sink as sinks
  A stranger in the crowded streets of busy London,
  A few enquiries, and the crowds pass on,
  And all’s forgotten.  O’er my grassy grave