The Flower last in the Bud.

"Oh! say not 'twere a keener blow
To lose a child of riper years,
You cannot feel a mother's woe,

You cannot dry a mother's tears;

The girl who rears a sickly plant,

Or cherishes a wounded dove,

Will love them most, while most they need
The watchfulness of love."

T. H. BAYLY.

It is not an uncommon feeling, that the death of young children is but a light affliction. But that it is difficult to determine whether it costs the heart more to part with a younger or an older child, is the testimony of many from whom both have been sundered.

Says the Rev. Thomas Randall to a friend, "I have had spoilings of these pleasant things often, and find it hard to tell whether the separation of the younger or the elder branches be most wounding to the root. In my sympathy

on such an occasion, rather than attempt to alleviate sorrow by insisting on the youth of the

child, I would allow the cause of anguish to be great, and I would seek to introduce cheerfulness and joy in the midst of such scenes of darkness and heaviness, only from the unchangeable and everlasting Gospel, which turns all our darkness into light, and our sorrows into joys."

A gardener is watching with special care for the unfolding of a rare and beautiful flower. He gives it the sunshine and the dew, and tenderly protects it from the biting frost. With delight he looks upon his delicate bud, not only beautiful in itself, but enclosing in its deep heart a beauty and fragrance which will gladden every beholder. While thus cherishing his darling bud, despite all his watchfulness, the blighting frost withers it upon its stem,-it droops and dies. He sits by it and mourns. Your ministry of comfort is ill-suited to his case, if the burden of it is-"you have lost only a bud." "True," he replies, "but it was such a bud, and the flower was in the bud. Have I not then lost both in one, and that without the delight of seeing my flower in bloom?"

When a young person of promise is stricken down in the midst of his prospects of useful

ness, the parent's sorrow is not only shared by a large circle of attached friends, but the society with which, in a thousand ways, the departed had become interlinked, has also sustained a loss. This general sentiment of regret this spontaneous outflow of sympathy-is a solace to the bereaved heart. And there is conveyed with it the consoling assurance, that the buried child will long live in the memory of many, whose grief, if not so deep, yet gives a true response to its own. But how different is it in the death of a young child! Society has sustained no loss;the world scarcely pauses to note the burial, in which, with the dearly cherished remains, are also buried the present joys, and the future hopes of the weeping parents. The sympathy expressed, is elicited entirely by the parents' grief, for no one else feels its loss. Consequently, there is less sympathy for the mourners, and less allowance for their intense sorrow. Especially is this likely to be the case in respect to the mother, whose life was bound up in the life of her child. It was her little world,—in which, with peculiar cares, she had also peculiar joys. In her heart of hearts she feels stricken.

She has lost the idol of her love,-one from whom she hoped for support and solace and joy in future years. Others have had the flower as well as the bud, but in losing one, she has lost both. And as one after another attempts consolation by suggesting how comparatively small a trial it is to lose so young a child, she withdraws more and more into her own spirit, feeling that all memory of her lost one, even the recollection of its name, will soon have passed away from all but herself, and its sweet image silently appeals to her with touching eloquence.

Oh! soon from every heart, mama,

My memory will pass,

And who will think of that lone spot
Where springs the waving grass!

That closely curtained silent bed,
Where now I rest my weary head.

For I was but a little child,

A bud, not yet a flower,

When plucked by Death, and borne away

Far from thy loving bower.

And none, alas, will mourn for this,

For who a tender bud will miss?

Then wear me in thy heart, mama,
There let me cherished be;
No other will my image keep;
Remains no trace of me

If not within thy heart's deep cell.
Oh, break not then, this only spell.

My child thy beauteous picture hangs
In memory's mourning hall,—
Set in a frame of wroughten gold

On her reflecting wall.

Oh! never will I part with this,
My own, my cherished bud of bliss!

Sweet broken bud! each passing day
Strengthens thy cherished spell,
In joy or grief, in weal or woe,

Still thou dost with me dwell.

I'll wear thee in my bosom's core
Till this long, weeping night is o'er.