And very fitting did it seem ;
For sure as morning came,

Behind her cradle bars she smiled
To catch the first faint ray,

As from the trellis smiles the flower,
And opens to the day.

But not so beautiful they rear
Their airy cups of blue,

As turned her sweet eyes to the light,
Brimmed with sleep's tender dew;
And not so close their tendrils fine

Round their supports are thrown,

As those dear arms whose outstretched plea Clasped all hearts to her own.

We used to think how she had come,

Even as comes the flower,

The last and perfect added gift
To crown Love's morning hour;
And how in her was imaged forth
The love we could not say,
As on the little dewdrops round
Shines back the heart of day.

We never could have thought, O God,

That she must wither up,

Almost before a day was flown,

Like the morning-glory's cup;

We never thought to see her droop
Her fair and noble head,

Till she lay stretched before our eyes,
Wilted, and cold, and dead!

OUR LITTLE QUEEN.

COULD you have seen the violets
That blossomed in her eyes;

Could you have kissed that golden hair,
And drank those holy sighs;

You would have been her tiring-maid

As joyfully as I,

Content to dress your little

And let the world go by.

queen,

Could you have seen those violets
Hide in their graves of snow;

Drawn all that gold along your hand
While she lay smiling so;

O, you would tread this weary earth
As heavily as I !—

Content to clasp her little grave,

And let the world go by.

-Overland Monthly.

THE CHANGELING.

I HAD a little daughter,
And she was given to me,
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee,
That I, by the force of Nature,
Might in some dim-wise divine
The depth of His infinite patience
To this wayward soul of mine.

I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,

And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair;
For it was as wavy and golden,
And as many changes took,
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of the brook.

To what can I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover?

How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
And dimpled her wholly over,

Till her outstretched hands smiled also,
And I almost seemed to see

The very heart of her mother

Sending sun through her veins to me!

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zincali
But loosed the hampering strings,
And when they opened her cage-door,
My little bird used her wings.

But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,

That seems like her bud in full blossom,

And smiles as she never smiled:

When I wake in the morning, I see it
Where she always used to lie,
And I feel as weak as a violet
Alone 'neath the awful sky :-

As weak, yet as trustful also ;
For the whole year long I see,

All the wonders of faithful Nature
Still worked for the love of me;

Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,
Rain falls, suns rise and set,

Earth whirls, and all but to prosper

A poor little violet.

This child is not mine as the first was,

I cannot sing it to rest,

I cannot lift it up fatherly

And bless it upon my breast;

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,

And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to,
Transfigures its golden hair.

- James Russell Lowell.

DEATH OF AN INFANT.

A HOST of angels flying,

Through cloudless skies impelled,
Upon the earth beheld

A pearl of beauty lying,

Worthy to glitter bright

In heaven's vast halls of light.

They saw, with glances tender,
An infant newly born,

O'er whom life's earliest morn
Just cast its opening splendor.
Virtue it could not know,
Nor vice, nor joy, nor woe.