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THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.

ALARIC A. WATTS.

My sweet one, my sweet one, the tears were in my

eyes

When first I clasped thee to my heart, and heard thy feeble cries;

For I thought of all that I had borne as I bent me down to kiss

Thy cherry lips and sunny brow, my first-born bud of bliss!

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!

I gazed upon thy quiet face, half-blinded by my tears, Till 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 a father's anxious fears for thee can fever me no

more!

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 lips had scarce thy welcome breathed, ere my hopes were wrapt in shade.

Oh! 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 'twas 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 thy 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 rosebuds 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 blossom'd, droop'd, 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 mightst 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!

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I SAW her once-so freshly fair
That, like a blossom just unfolding,
She opened to Life's cloudless air,

And Nature joyed to view its moulding.
Her smile it haunts my memory yet,—
Her cheek's fine hue divinely glowing,-
Her rosebud mouth,-her eyes of jet,-
Around on all their light bestowing.
Oh! who could look on such a form,
So nobly free, so softly tender,
And darkly dream that earthly storm
Should dim such sweet, delicious splendour?

For in her mien, and in her face,

And in her young step's fairy lightness, Naught could the raptured gazer trace

But Beauty's glow and Pleasure's brightness.

I saw her twice,-an altered charm,
But still of magic richest, rarest;
Than girlhood's talisman less warm,
Though yet of earthly sights the fairest.
Upon her breast she held a child,

The very image of its mother,
Which ever to her smiling smiled,-
They seemed to live but in each other:

But matron cares, or lurking woe,

Her thoughtless, sinless look had banished,

And from her cheek the roseate glow
Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanished;
Within her eyes, upon her brow,

Lay something softer, fonder, deeper,
As if in dreams some visioned woe
Had broke the Elysium of the sleeper.

I saw her thrice,-Fate's dark decree
In widow's garments had arrayed her,
Yet beautiful she seemed to be

As even my reveries portrayed her;
The glow, the glance had passed away,
The sunshine and the sparkling glitter,
Still, though I noted pale decay,

The retrospect was scarcely bitter;
For in their place a calmness dwelt,
Serene, subduing, soothing, holy,
In feeling which the bosom felt

That every louder mirth is folly,
A pensiveness which is not grief,-
A stillness, as of sunset streaming,-
A fairy glow on flower and leaf,

Till earth looks like a landscape dreaming.

A last time, and unmoved she lay
Beyond Life's dim, uncertain river,
A glorious mould of fading clay

From whence the spark had fled for ever!
I gazed, my breast was like to burst,
And as I thought of years departed,-
The years wherein I saw her first,

When she, a girl, was tender-hearted:
And when I mused on later days,
As moved she in her matron duty,

A happy mother, in the blaze

Of ripened hope and sunny beauty;

I felt the chill,-I turned aside,

Bleak Desolation's cloud came o'er me,

And Being seemed a troubled tide

Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me!

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