1826.] A Voice from the Departed. 603 
unshed. [I had no power’ to check them ;—I had: none to shed in sym- 
pathy. She uttered her faint words of agonized complaint, and then 
eet subdued prayer—(offspring of resignation)—for strength and 
ortitude. I had no words to mingle with her's. I hovered ‘round and 
round in my disembodied condition. I saw my babes—too' young to 
suffer IT saw them looking up in mute wonder on their afflicted mother 
—I saw, but could not utter a father’s blessing—or lay substantial hand 
on their infant heads in token of my presence. fs 
’ Days passed—slowly—slowly. Atlength my wife—she who had been 
my wife—(oh, bitter’ dissolution of golden bands!)—she that was my 
widow—the dead one’s widow— she communed with her heart and with 
the Great Being:—the orgasm of first emotion was becalmed, and at 
length her fond heart gently throbbed like the half-lulled whisper of 
the tide, when in the softest summer evening the sun hath given his 
last glance to the waters and departed to his western clime. 
~ Subdued—not forgotten—was her grief. Cheerfully she assumed and 
accomplished her maternal duties, and the world smiled on her,—but she 
‘smiled not on the world; and while others seemed to enjoy and revel in 
existence, and in the enthusiastic developments of plan and execution— 
she seemed to stand alone —not cheerless, not friendless, not comfortless, 
—but like the ascetic hermit at a rich man’s feast, who eats for the pur- 
poses of sustaining life, and calmly passes by those delicate enticements 
which hold so great a place in the estimation of the world. She 
‘trained up my children in the way of virtue, and in a few years 
‘they became like ever-green ivy tendrils—he our’ first-born, and she 
at fair-eyed dove, second in our number, but equal in our hearts and 
opes. : 
i hs a spirit, I knew the inmost thoughts and emotions of the widowed 
protectress of those young ones, and delighted in the results of all I 
saw. Years passed—unclouded except by the past sorrow. Often was 
‘the spot where my dead ashes reposed visited by the widow and. her 
‘babes; and when their infant minds were capable of impression, 
their father was painted in their young memories, and engraved firmly on 
their hearts. 
Time ran on. ‘The mother died. I saw her wasting form, and marked 
: the slow progress of disease. Although separated from the body, still 
the human impressions of human emotions yet agitated me; life and 
‘death, though I could have no part in them, were still objects of con- 
templation to me. The widowed mother died—died as she had lived ; 
and I saw her eye glance its last glance on the children of her love— 
‘Theard the last pulsation of her heart, and caught her last sigh as it 
“mingled with the medium in which I existed. There lay those sightless 
‘orbs, fringed with their long dark lashes —there lay those hands, white as 
Aye marble ; and her lips, that uttered nought but love and gentle- 
al lay cold and livid. The seal of ages and long-enduring sleep 
’ 
t 
radled with repose was upon her, and under the same sod where m 
“bones had mouldered was the sweet flower deposited. “Death the 
shadow, and time the skeleton,” had waved their seeptres—and she was 
Mpa was dust—she was dust—and the throbbing hearts moved not 
in.——— iY 
__ In an instant, as in a whirlwind—or rather melting away as the 
‘summer twilight mingles in the darkness of the midnight—she fled—fled 
‘like a shadow, and the world held but two objects of sympathy for me. 
H 2 
