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,
Pale, like the second bow of heaven, as gently waste away;
And, sick with dark foreboding fears, we dared not breathe aloud,
Sat, hand in hand, in speechless grief, to wait death's coming
cloud.

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,
And murmured low of heaven's behests, and bliss attained by

thee;

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 Culled one soft lock of radiant hair-our only solace now,— Then placed around thy beauteous corse, flowers—not more fair and sweet

Twin rose-buds 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 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,
With not a taint of mortal life, except thy mortal birth,—
God bade thee early taste the spring for which so many thirst,
And bliss-eternal bliss-is thine, my fairest and my first!

THINK OF ME.

THINK of me, and I'll tell thee when

The moment of that thought shall be;
When yon sweet star is rising, then,
Oh then, beloved, think of me!
Yes, let thy memory on me rest,
When, pale and beautiful as now,
Yon planet sinks beneath the west,
With dewy light and silver brow.

When the blue arch of heaven is bright,
When not a shadow frowns above,

The beauty of its placid light

Will seem the emblem of our love.

When clouds are gathering on its way,
And the black storms around thee wait,
The darkness of its shrouded ray

Will seem the emblem of our fate.

L. E. L.

THE FEMALE EXILE.

BY MISS. BANNERMAN.

YE hills of my country, soft-fading in blue,
Ye seats of my childhood, for ever adieu!
Yet not for a brighter your skies I resign,
When my wandering footsteps revisit the Rhine;
But sacred to me, is the roar of the wave

That mingles its tide with the blood of the brave,
Where blasts of the trumpet for battle combine,
And the heart was laid low that gave rapture to mine.

Ye scenes of remembrance that sorrow beguiled,
Your uplands I leave for the desolate wild;
For nature is nought to the eye of despair
But the image of hopes that have vanished in air:
Again, ye fair blossoms of flower and of tree,

Ye shall bloom to the morn, though ye bloom not for me;
Again your lone wood-paths that wind by the stream,
Be the haunt of the lover-to hope—and to dream.

But never to me shall the summer renew

The bowers where the days of my happiness flew ;
Where my soul found her partner, and thought to bestow
The colours of heaven on the dwellings of woe!
Too faithful recorders of times that are past,
The Eden of Love that was ever to last!
Once more may soft accents your wild echoes fill,
And the young and the happy be worshippers still.

To me ye are lost!-but your summits of green
Shall charm through the distance of many a scene;
In woe, and in wandering, 'mid deserts, return
Like the soul of the dead to the perishing urn!
Ye hills of my country! farewell ever-more,

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.

BY DELTA.

Ir is a desolate eve;

Dim, cheerless is the scene my path around;-
Patters the rain; the breeze-stirred forests grieve;
And wails the stream with melancholy sound:
While, at my feet, behold,

With vigorous talons clenched, and bright eye shut,
With proud curved beak, and wiry plumage bold,
Thou liest, dead eagle of the desert; but
Preserving yet in look thy tameless mood,

As if, though stilled by death, thy heart were unsubdued.

How cam'st thou to thy death?

Did lapsing years o'ercome, and leave thee weak,—
Or whirlwinds, on thy heaven-descending path,
Dash thee against the precipice's peak?—

'Mid rack and floating cloud

Did scythe-winged lightning flash athwart thy brain, And drive thee, from thine elevation proud, Down whirling lifeless to the dim-seen plain?— I know not-may not guess; but here, alone, Lifeless thou liest, outstretched beside the desert stone.

A proud life hath been thine!

High on the herbless rock thou 'wok'st to birth,
And, gazing down, saw far beneath thee shine
Outstretched, horizon-girt, the map-like earth.
What rapture must have gushed

Warm round thy heart, when first thy wings essayed,
Adventurously, their heaven-ward flight, and rushed
Up towards day's blazing eye-star, undismayed,—
Above the space's vacancy unfurled,

And, far receded down, the dim material world!

Το

How fast-how far-how long

Thine had it been from rack-veiled eyrie high swoop, and still the wood-lark's lyric song, The leveret's gambols, and the lambkin's cry?

The terror-stricken dove

Cowered down amid the oak-wood's central shade;
While ferny glens below, and cliffs above,
To thy fierce shriek responsive echo made,
Carrying the wild alarm from vale to vale,
That thou, the forest king, wert out upon the gale!

When downward glens were dark,

And o'er moist earth glowed morning's rosy star,
High o'er the scarce-tinged clouds 't was thine to mark
The orient chariot of the sun afar:

And, oh! how grand to soar

Beneath the full moon, on strong pinion driven;
To pierce the regions of grey cloud-land o'er,
And drift amid the star-isled seas of heaven!
Even like a courier sent from earth to hold
With space-dissevered worlds, unawed communion bold.

Dead king-bird of the waste!

And is thy curbless span of freedom o'er?

No more shall thine ascending form be traced?
And shall the hunter of the hills no more
Hark to thy regal cry?

While rising o'er the stream-girt vales, thy form,
Lessening, commingles with the azure sky,
Glimpsed 'mid the masses of the gathering storm,
As if it were thy proud resolve to see

Betwixt thee and dim earth the zig-zag lightnings flee!

A child of freedom thou!—

Thy birthright the tall cliff and sky beyond:
Thy feet are fetterless; thy fearless brow
Ne'er, quailing, tyrant man's dominions owned.
But nature's general law

The slave and freeman must alike obey:

Pride reels; and Power, that kept a world in awe, The dreadful summons hears ;-and where are they?— Vanished like night-dreams from the sleeper's mind, Dusk 'mid dissolving day, or thunder on the wind! Literary Souvenir.