Where Sorrow, with a trembling hand,
The death-dimmed eye of Beauty closes,
And Love goes mourning, through the land,
For her lost roses.

W. H. C. HOSMER.

THE FIRST-BORN.

WE laid thee down in sinless rest, and from

thine infant brow

Culled one soft lock of radiant hair

solace now,

our only

Then placed around thy beauteous corse, flowers, not more fair and sweet;

Twin rosebuds in thy little hands, and jasmine at thy feet.

Though other offspring still be ours, as fair perchance as thou,

With all the beauty of thy cheek—the sunshine of thy brow,

They never can replace the bud our early fondness nurst,

They may be lovely and beloved, but not like thee the first!

The first! How many a memory bright that one sweet word can bring

Of hopes that blossomed, drooped, and died, in life's delightful spring;

Of fervid feelings passed away- those early seeds of bliss,

That germinate in hearts unseared by such a world as this!

My sweet one, my sweet one, my fairest, and my first!

When I think of what thou might'st have been, my heart is like to burst;

But gleams of gladness through the gloom their soothing radiance dart,

And my sighs are hushed, my tears are dried, when I turn to what thou art!

Pure as the snow-flake ere it falls and takes the stain of earth,

With not a taint of mortal life, except the mortal birth,

God bade thee early taste the spring for which so many thirst;

And bliss

eternal bliss

and my first!

is thine, my fairest,

ALARIO A. WATTS.

THINK THAT YOUR BABE IS THERE.

YE who mourn

Whene'er yon vacant cradle, or the robes
That decked the lost one's form, call back a tide
Of alienated joy, can ye not trust

Your treasure to His arms, whose changeless care
Passeth a mother's love? Can ye not hope,
When a few wasting years their course have run,
to him, though he no more on earth

To

go

And when glad faith doth catch

Some echo of celestial harmonies,

Archangels' praises, with the high response

Of cherubim, and seraphim, O think

Your babe is there!

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

"I SHALL GO TO HIM, BUT HE SHALL NOT RETURN TO ME."

WHILE sickness rent thine infant frame,
Before our God we wept and prayed;
But when His heavenly summons came,
Fond nature struggled, and obeyed.
We laid thee in thy early rest,

And changed the burden of our prayer:
May He who took thee to the blest,

But make thee our forerunner there!

THOUGHT AT A CHILD'S GRAVE.

'TIS the work
Of many a dark hour, and of many a prayer,
To bring the heart back from an infant gone !
Hope must give o'er, and busy fancy blot
Its images from all the silent rooms,
And every sight and sound familiar to her
Undo its sweetest link; and so, at last,

The fountain that, once loosed, must flow forever,
Will hide and waste in silence. When the smile
Steals to her pallid lip again, and spring
Wakens its buds above thee, we will come,
And, standing by thy music-haunted grave,
Look on each other cheerfully,
and say,
A child that we have loved is gone to heaven,
And by this gate of flowers she passed away!

WILLIS.

THE ONLY CHILD.

PRETTY boy!

He was my only child; how fair he looked,
In the white garment that encircled him!
'T was like a marble slumber, and when we
Laid him beneath the green earth in his bed,
I thought my heart was breaking; yet I lived,
But I am weary now.

BARRY CORNWALL.

SOWING IN TEARS.

STRAIGHT and still the baby lies, No more smiling in his eyes, Neither tears nor wailing cries.

Smiles and tears alike are done:
He has need of neither one-
Only I must weep alone.

Tiny fingers, all too slight,
Hold within their grasping tight,

Waxen berries scarce more white.

in vain;

Nights and days of weary pain,
I have held them close-
Now I never shall again.

Crossed upon a silent breast,
By no suffering distressed,
Here they lie in marble rest.

They shall ne'er unfolded be,
Never more in agony

Cling so pleadingly to me.

Never! O, the hopeless sound
To my heart, so closely wound
All his little being round!