MY CHILD.

I CANNOT make him dead!
His fair, sunshiny head,

Is ever bounding round my study chair;
Yet when my eyes, now dim

With tears, I turn to him,

The vision vanishes, he is not there!

I walk my parlour floor,

And through the open door

I hear a footfall on the chamber stair;

I'm stepping towards the hall

To give the boy a call;

And then bethink me that he is not there!

I thread the crowded street :

A satchelled lad I meet,

With the same beaming eyes, and colored hair; And as he 's running by,

Follow him with my eye,

Scarcely believing that he is not there!

I know his face is hid

Under the coffin-lid;

Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead;

My hand that marble felt ;

O'er it in prayer I knelt ;

Yet my heart whispers that he is not there!

I cannot make him dead!

When passing by the bed,

So long watched over with parental care,

My spirit and my eye

Seek it inquiringly,

Before the thought comes that he is not there!

When, at the cool, gray break

Of day, from sleep I wake,

With my first breathing of the morning air

My soul goes up with joy

To Him who gave my boy,

Then comes the sad thought that he is not there!

When, at the day's calm close,

Before we seek

repose,

I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer,
Whate'er I may be saying,

I am, in spirit, praying

For our boy's spirit, though he is not there!

Not there!where, then, is he?

The form I used to see

Was but the raiment that he used to wear;

The grave, that now doth

Upon that cast-off dress,

press

Is but his wardrobe locked; he is not there!

He lives in all the past

He lives; nor, to the last,

Of seeing him again will I despair;

In dreams I see him now;

And on his angel brow

I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!"

Yes, we all live to God!

Father, thy chastening rod

So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear,

That, in the spirit land,

Meeting at thy right hand,

'T will be our heaven to find that he is there!

THE MORNING-GLORY.

WE wreathed about our darling's head the morning-glory bright;

Her little face looked out beneath, so full of life

and light,

So lit as with a sunrise, that we could only say, She is the morning-glory true, and her poor types are they.

So always, from that happy time, we call her by their name;

And very fitting it did 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.