"Till with that lullaby I feel Sleep's dewy mantle o'er me wreathing! But first, ere I can calm recline, In silent prayer I kneel beside thee, SONG. LEAVES quiver in the balmy air, the moon grows bright above, Beauty is beaming every where,— 't is just the hour for love! So calm, so silent, I could deem beneath yon arch of blue Breathe none beside myself, dear love, the nightingale and you! The mazy brook is whispering now, a soft tale to the flowers, The night-breeze freshens on my brow, how sweet these moonlight hours! And sweet the twilight path that guides my footsteps through the dew, Each eve, to this green dell, my love, the nightingale and you! Now some seek halls of revelry, where flows the ruddy wine; THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN. BY ALARIC A. WATTS. Fare thee well, thou first and fairest ! BURNS. My sweet one, my sweet one, the tears were in my eyes I turned to many a withered hope,—to years of grief and pain,— And the cruel wrongs of a bitter world flashed o'er my boding brain ; I thought of friends, grown worse than cold, of persecuting foes,— And I asked of heaven, if ills like these must mar thy youth's repose! -half blinded by my tearsI gazed upon thy quiet faceTill gleams of bliss, unfelt before, came brightening on my fears; Sweet rays of hope, that fairer shone 'mid the clouds of gloom that bound them, As stars dart down their loveliest light when midnight skies are 'round them. My sweet one, my sweet one, thy life's brief hour is o'er, And for the hopes-the sun-bright hopes-that blossomed at thy birth,— They too have fled, to prove how frail are cherished things of earth! 'Tis true that thou wert young, my child; but though brief thy span below, To me it was a little age of agony and woe; For, from thy first faint dawn of life thy cheek began to fade, And my heart had scarce thy welcome breathed, ere my hopes were wrapt in shade. O the child in its hours of health and bloom, that is dear as thou wert then, Grows far more prized-more fondly loved-in sickness and in pain; And thus 't was thine to prove, dear babe, when every hope was lost, Ten times more precious to my soul-for all that thou hadst cost! Cradled in thy fair mother's arms, we watched thee day by day, It came at length;—o'er thy bright blue eye the film was gathering fast, And an awful shade passed o'er thy brow, the deepest and the last ; In thicker gushes strove thy breath,—we raised thy drooping head; A moment more—the final pang-and thou wert of the dead! Thy gentle mother turned away to hide her face from me, She would have chid me that I mourned a doom so blest as thine, Had not her own deep grief burst forth in tears as wild as mine! We laid thee down in sinless rest, and from thine infant brow not more fair and sweetTwin rose-buds in thy little hands, and jasmine at thy feet. Though other offspring still be ours, as fair perchance as thou, 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, 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 my 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, THINK OF ME. THINK of me, and I'll tell thee when The moment of that thought shall be; Oh then, beloved, think of me! When, pale and beautiful as now, When the blue arch of heaven is bright, The beauty of its placid light Will seem the emblem of our love. And the black storms around thee wait, The darkness of its shrouded ray Will seem the emblem of our fate. L. E. L. THE EXILE. BY MISS. BANNERMAN. YE hills of my country, soft-fading in blue, That mingles its tide with the blood of the brave, Ye scenes of remembrance that sorrow beguiled, Ye shall bloom to the morn, though ye bloom not for me; But never to me shall the summer renew The bowers where the days of my happiness flew; Once more may soft accents your wild echoes fill, To me ye are lost!—but your summits of green As I cleave the dark waves of your rock-rugged shore, I ask of the hovering gale if it come From the oak-towering woods on the mountains of home. |