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Hanna, Abigail Stanley

"Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland"


Your Angel wife bath'd in that flood,
And proved a Saviour's promise true,
And when she gently pass'd from earth
She left her dying love for you;
And bade you seek a Saviour's face,
And by His mercy be forgiven,
And by that new and living way,
Seek an inheritance in Heaven."
"Then she is dead," he mournful cried,
"'Tis better thus, for see the sun
With rosy light now streaks the east:
And ere it sets my race is run.
Firm would I stand upon the drop,
Meet firmly my approaching doom;
But death is not an endless sleep,
And justice lives beyond the tomb.
Yet this conviction comes too late;
My soul is lost,--I cannot pray;
Forget your son--forget my fate,
And walk in wisdom's pleasant way."
In agony the mother pressed
To her sad heart her guilty son;
But yet, like incense from that heart,
Sweetly arose, "thy will be done."
No hands were folded on his breast.
They laid him not within the tomb;
The surgeon took him from the drop,
To meet a more disgraceful doom.
And such is life, whose ebb and flow
Heaves the deep sea of human mind;
True happiness they only know,
Whose every wish's to Heaven resigned.


The History of a Household.

Early in the winter of 18--, there was a heavy rain, accompanied by
high winds, which swelled the waters of the Sandy river to an amazing
height, and every moving thing upon its surface was borne away with
the rapidity of lightning.


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