THE PILGRIM FUNERAL.

It was a wintry scene,

The hills were whiten'd o'er,

And the chill north winds were blowing keen
Along the rocky shore.

Gone was the wood-bird's lay

That the summer forest fills;

And the voice of the stream had pass'd away
From its path among the hills;

And the low sun coldly smiled

Through the boughs of the ancient wood,

Where a hundred souls-son, sire, wife, and child— Around a coffin stood.

They raised it gently up,

And, through the untrodden snow, They bore it away, with a solemn step, To a woody vale below;

And grief was in each eye

As they moved towards the spot; And brief low speech, and tear and sigh, Told that a friend was not.

THE PILGRIM FUNERAL.

When they laid his cold corpse low
In its dark and narrow cell,

Heavy the mingled earth and snow
Upon his coffin fell.

Weeping, they passed away,

And left him there alone,

With no mark to tell where their dead friend lay, But the mossy forest stone.

When the winter storms were gone,
And the strange birds sang around,
Green grass and violets sprung upon
That spot of holy ground.

And o'er him giant trees

Their proud arms toss'd on high,

And rustled music in the breeze
That wandered through the sky.

When these were overspread

With the leaves that autumn gave,

They bow'd them in the wind, and shed
Their leaves upon his grave.

These woods are perished now,

And that humble grave forgot,

And the yeoman sings as he draws his plough

O'er that once sacred spot.

4.5

46

THE PILGRIM FUNERAL.

Two centuries are flown

Since they laid his cold corpse low,

And his bones are mouldered to dust, and strewn
To the breezes long ago.

And they who laid him there—

That sad and suffering trainNow sleep in dust, to tell us where No lettered stones remain,

Their memory remains ;

And ever shall remain,

More lasting than the aged fanes

Of Egypt's storied plain.

JOHN H. BRYANT.

BURIAL HILL AT PLYMOUTH.*

THE Pilgrim Fathers-where are they?
The waves that brought them o'er
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray,
As they break along the shore;—
Still roll in the bay as they rolled that day
When the Mayflower moored below,
When the sea around was black with storms,
And white the shore with snow.

The mists that wrapped the pilgrims' sleep
Still brood upon the tide ;

And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep,
To stay its waves of pride:

But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale
When the heavens looked dark, is gone :-

As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud,
Is seen, and then withdrawn.

* COLE'S HILL, where the Pilgrims who died in the first winter were buried. Their graves were smoothed, lest the Indians should learn the great extent of mortality which prevailed. No traces now remain of these graves.