KINGDOM COME. I Do not believe the sad story I shall pass far away to the glory And grandeur of Kingdom Come. The paleness of death, and its stillness, May rest on my brow for awhile; And my spirit may lose in its chillness The splendour of hope's happy smile; But the gloom of the grave will be transient, And light as the slumbers of worth; And then I shall blend with the ancient And beautiful forms of the earth. But soon we shall meet in the boundless THE ARMIES OF THE EVE. Nor in the golden morning For languidly and dimly then Nor when the noon unfoldeth Its sunny light and smile, And gentle winds are whispering back O, then those starry millions Their streaming banners weave, Whose footsteps brush the feathery fern Of high and holier climes; We greet them with the blessed names In beauteous ranks they roam, TO A MIDNIGHT PHANTOM. PALE, melancholy one! Why art thou lingering here? Memorial of dark ages gone, Herald of darkness near: Thou stand'st immortal, undefiledEven thou, the unknown, the strange, the wild, Spell-word of mortal fear. Thou art a shadowy form, That unseen spirits wear. Thou hast revealed to me Chiming the whole night long Through all the dreary night, Send to the brain their maddening blight, My phrenzied thoughts all wildly blend wend, Or down in mockery bow. Away, pale form, away The break of morn is nigh, And far and dim, beyond the day The eternal night-glooms lie: Art thou a dweller in the dread Assembly of the mouldering dead, Or in the worlds on high? Art thou of the blue waves, Or of yon starry climeAn inmate of the ocean graves, Or of the heavens sublime? Is thy mysterious place of rest The eternal mansions of the blest, Or the dim shores of time! Hast thou forever won Or wanderest thou on weary wing Thou answerest not. The sealed And hidden things that lie Beyond the grave, are unrevealed, Unseen by mortal eyeThy dreamy home is all unknown, For spirits freed by death alone May win the viewless sky. WILLIAM CROSWELL. [Born, 1804. Died, 1851.] WILLIAM CROSWELL was born at Hudson, in New York, on the seventh of November, 1804. His father, then editor of a literary and political journal, in a few years became a clergyman of the Episcopal church, and removed to New Haven, Connecticut, where the son was prepared for college by Mr. JOEL JONES, since well known as one of the justices of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. He was graduated at New Haven, in 1822, and, with his brother SHERMAN, soon after opened a select school in that city, which was surrendered at the end of the second quarter, after which he passed nearly four years in desultory reading in the house of his father. An invitation to study medicine, with an uncle, was declined, partly from an unconquerable aversion to surgical exhibitions; and a short experience of the editorial profession, in the office of his cousin, Mr. EDWIN CROSWELL, of the Albany Argus, discouraged all thoughts of devotion to the press and to politics. In the summer before his twentieth birth-day, his reputation for talents was such that the public authorities of Hartford requested him to deliver an oration on the anniversary of the declaration of independence, and he accepted the invitation, substituting a poem of several hundred lines for a discourse in prose. In 1826, after much hesitation, arising from the modesty of his nature, and his sense of the dignity of the priestly office, he entered the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, in New York, and there, and subsequently under Bishop BROWNELL, in Hartford, pursued the usual course of professional studies, conducting meanwhile for two years, with Mr. DOANE, now Bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Jersey, a religious newspaper called "The Episcopal Watchman." An intimate friendship thus commenced between Mr. CROSWELL and Mr. DOANE, ended only with Mr. CROSWELL'S life. "Man has never been in closer bonds with man,' says the Bishop, in a discourse on his death, "than he with me, for five and twenty years." Mr. DOANE having resigned his professorship in Washington College, Hartford, to become rector of Trinity church, in Boston, the editorship of the Episcopal Watchman" was relinquished; and soon after Mr. CROSWELL received priest's orders, in 1829, he too went to Boston, where for eleven years he was settled as minister of Christ church. In this period he was a bachelor, and passing most of his time in "the cloister," a room fitted up in the rear of the church for his study, and at the Athenæum, attended with singular faithfulness to the duties of his calling, while he kept up a loving acquaintance with literature and art, and with a few men of congenial tastes and pursuits. When Mr. DOANE became bishop of the Epis copal church in New Jersey, Boston no longer possessed its most agreeable charm for his friend, and he wrote: "TO G. W. D. "I miss thee at the morning tide, I miss thee more, when day has died, "How can I pass that gladsome door, Is loneliness and gloom? Each place where most thou lov'dst to be, He also addressed the youthful bishop the following sonnet, which seems now to have had a sort of prophetic significance. "AD AMICUM. "Let no gainsaying lips despise thy youth; A sevenfold grace on thine anointed head, A mightier rule be thine, O servant good and true.'” In 1840 Mr. CROSWELL resigned the rectorship of Christ church in Boston, to accept that of St. Peter's, in Auburn, New York, where he remained four years, during which period he was married to an estimable woman of Boston; and this last circumstance was perhaps one of the causes of his return to that city, in 1844, though the chief cause was doubtless his sympathy with several of his old friends there as to those views which are known in the Episcopal church as "Tractarian." A new parish was organized, the church of the Advent was erected, and he became its rector, with a congregation in which were the venerable poet DANA, his son, the author of "Two Years before the Mast," and other persons of social and intellectual eminence. Of the unhappy controversy which ensued between the rector of the Advent and his bishop this is not the place to speak; nor, were it otherwise, am I sufliciently familiar with its merits to attempt to do justice to either party in a statement of it. This controversy was a continual pain to Dr. CROSWELL, and his more intimate friends, until his death, which occurred under the most impressive circumstances, on Sunday, the ninth of November, 1851, just seven years after his return to Boston. He had preached in the morning and during the afternoon service, which was appointed for the children of the congregation, his strength suddenly failed, he gave out a hymn, repeated with touching pathos a prayer, and in a feeble voice, while still kneeling, pronounced the apostolic benediction, and in a little while was dead. Since the death of Dr. CROSWELL, his aged father, who had previously been occupied with the arrangement of materials for his own memoirs that they might be written by his son, has published a most interesting biography of that son and in this is the only collection of his poems which has appeared, except a small one which Bishop DOANE many years ago added to an edition of KEBLE'S "Christian Year." Dr. CROSWELL had a fine taste in literature, and among his poems are many of remarkable grace and sweetness. They are for the most part souvenirs of his friendships, or of the vicissitudes of his religious life, and seem to have been natural and unstudied expressions of his feelings. Bishop DOANE well describes him by saying he had more unwritten poetry in him" than any man he ever knew. THE SYNAGOGUE. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away,"-ST. PAUL. I SAW them in their synagogue, As in their ancient day, The scene will fade away, The latticed galleries shine Sheds, mingled with the hues of day, On swarthy brow and piercing glance The two-leaved doors slide slow apart As rise the Hebrew harmonies, With chanted prayers between, Robed in his sacerdotal vest, The glow and power that sate And fervently that hour I pray'd, Might break on every soul, That on their harden'd hearts the veil Might be no longer dark, But be forever rent in twain Like that before the ark. For yet the tenfold film shall fall, When thou, with all MESSIAH's signs Shall, by JEHOVAH's nameless name, Invoke the Nazarene. THE CLOUDS. "Cloud land! Gorgeous land!"-COLERIDGE. I CANNOT look above and see Of evening clouds, so swimmingly In gold and purple pass, And think not, LORD, how thou wast scen On Israel's desert way, Before them, in thy shadowy screen, Pavilion'd all the day! Or, of those robes of gorgeous hue Which the Redeemer wore, When, ravish'd from his followers' view, Aloft his flight he bore, When lifted, as on mighty wing, He curtained his ascent, And, wrapt in clouds, went triumphing Is it a trail of that same pall That high above, o'ermantling all, When man expecteth not! When thou shalt come again with power, Upon the clouds of heaven' WILLIAM CROSWELL. THE ORDINAL. ALAS for me if I forget The memory of that day Which fills my waking thoughts, nor yet In dreams I still renew the rites And none can part again. The heart for God alone; Again I kneel as then I knelt, While he above me stands, And seem to feel, as then I felt, The pressure of his hands. Again the priests in meet array, As my weak spirit fails, As then, the sacramental host Of Gon's elect are by, When many a voice its utterance lost, As then they on my vision rose, And desk and cushion'd book repose In solemn sanctity, The mitre o'er the marble niche, The broken crook and key, That from a bishop's tomb shone rich The hangings, the baptismal font, With decency arranged; Beneath their covering shine, The solemn ceremonial past, And I am set apart To serve the LORD, from first to last, And I have sworn, with pledges dire, Which Gop and man have heard, O Thou, who in thy holy place Grant me, thy meanest servant, grace That so, replenish'd from above, Thou mavst he honoured, and in love CHRISTMAS EVE. THE thickly-woven boughs they wreathe A soft, reviving odour breathe Of summer's gentle reign; And rich the ray of mild green light Comes struggling through the latticed height O, let the streams of solemn thought From deeper sources spring than aught Then, though the summer's pride departs, Rests on the cheerless woods, our hearts THE DEATH OF STEPHEN. WITH awful dread his murderers shook, As, radiant and serene, The lustre of his dying look Was like an angel's seen; Or Moses' face of paly light, When down the mount he trod, All glowing from the glorious sight And presence of his God. To us, with all his constancy, Be his rapt vision given, Revealments bright of heaven. THE CHRISTMAS OFFERING. WE Come not with a costly store, From Ophir's shore of gold: Blends with our offering. But still our love would bring its best, A spirit keenly tried By fierce affliction's fiery test, And seven times purified: The fragrant graces of the mind, The virtues that delight To give their perfume out, will find Acceptance in thy sight. GEORGE D. PRENTICE. [Born, 1804.J MR. PRENTICE is a native of Preston, in Con. necticut, and was educated at Brown University, in Providence, where he was graduated in 1823. He edited for several years, at Hartford, "The New England Weekly Review," in connection, I believe, with JOHN G. WHITTIER; and in 1831 he removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he has since conducted the "Journal," of that city, one of the most popular gazettes ever published in this country. Nearly all his poems were written while he was in the university. They have never been published collectively. THE CLOSING YEAR. [form, "Tis midnight's holy hour-and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling; 'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest, Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirr'd, As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand, Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn And Winter with his aged locks, and breathe In mournful cadences, that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the earth forever. 'Tis a time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have pass'd away, And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love, And, bending mournfully above the pale Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has pass'd to nothingness. The year Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course, It waved its sceptre o'er the beautiful, And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man, and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where throng'd The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It pass'd o'er The battle-plain, where sword and spear and shield Flash'd in the light of midday-and the strength Of serried hosts is shiver'd, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crush'd and mouldering skeleton. It came And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their home In the dim land of dreams. Remorseless Time- He And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, LINES TO A LADY. LADY, I love, at eventide, When stars, as now, are on the wave, Upon the one dear form that gave Eve's low, faint wind is breathing now, |