COLONEL H. L. MILLER,

Sorrow and Joy collude. One mansion hears

The children shouting o'er their Christmas Tree,

While in the next resound the widow's wail

And weeping of the fatherless. So walk

Sickness and health. One rounds the cheek at morn,

The other with a ghost-like movement glides

Unto the nightly couch, and lo! the wheels

Of life drive heavily, and all its springs

Revolving in mysterious mechanism

Are troubled.

And how slight the instrument

That sometimes sends the strong man to his tomb,

Revealing that the glory of his prime,

Is as the flower of grass.

Of this we thought

When looking on the face that lay so calm

And comely in its narrow coffin-bed,

Remembering how the months of pain that sank

His manly vigor to an infant's sigh

Were met unmurmuringly.

Dense was the throng

That gather'd to his obsequies,— and well

The Pastor's prayer of faith essayed to gird

The smitten hearts that whelm'd in sorrow mourn'd

Husband and sire, whose ever-watchful love

Guarded their happiness.

Slowly moved on

The long procession, led by martial men

Who deeply in their patriot minds deplored

Their fallen compeer, and bade music lay

With plaintive voice, her chaplet down beside

His open grave.

Then, the first setting sun

Of our New-Year, cast off his wintry frown,

And seemed to write in clear, long lines of gold

Upon the whiten'd earth, the glorious words,

So shall the dead arise, at the last trump,

Sown here in weakness, to be raised in power,

Sown in corruption, to put on the robes

Of immortality.

Praise be to Him

Who gives through Christ our Lord, to dying flesh

Such victory.