A MOTHER'S GRIEF.

O mark the sufferings of the babe
That cannot speak its woe;

To see the infant tears gush forth, Yet know not why they flow;

To meet the meek uplifted eye,

That fain would ask relief,

Yet can but tell of agony--
This is a mother's grief.

Through dreary days and darker nights,
To trace the march of death;
To hear the faint and frequent sigh,
The quick and shortened breath;
To watch the last dread strife draw near,
And pray that struggle brief,
Though all is ended with its close--
This is a mother's grief!

To see in one short hour, decayed
The hope of future years;

To feel how vain a father's prayers,
How vain a mother's tears,

To think the cold grave now must close
O'er what was once the chief

Of all the treasured joys of earth-
This is a mother's grief!

Yet when the first wild throb is past
Of anguish and despair,

To lift the eye of faith to heaven,

And think, "My child is there!"
This best can dry the gushing tears,
This yields the heart relief;
Until the Christian's pious hope
O'ercomes a mother's grief.

DALE

A FATHER'S GRIEF.

O trace the bright rose fading fast
From a fair daughter's cheek;
To read upon her pensive brow
The fear she will not speak;

To mark that deep and sudden flush,
So beautiful and brief,

Which tells the progress of decay--
This is a father's grief.

When languor, from her joyless couch,
Has scared sweet sleep away,
And heaviness, that comes with night,
Departs not with the day;

To meet the fond endearing smile,
That seeks, with false relief,
Awhile to calm his bursting heart—
This is a father's grief.

To stand beside the sufferer's couch,
While life is ebbing fast;

To mark that once illumined eye

With death's dull film o'ercast ;

To watch the struggles of the frame

When earth has no relief,

And hopes of heaven are breathed in vainThis is a father's grief.

To listen where her gentle voice
Its welcome music shed,
And find within his lonely halls

The silence of the dead;

To look, unconsciously, for her
The chosen and the chief

Of earthly joys—and look in vain —
This is a father's grief!

And not when that dread hour is past,

And life is pain no more—

Not when the dreary tomb is closed

O'er her so loved before;

Not then does kind oblivion come

To lend his woes relief,

But with him to the grave he bears
A father's rooted grief.

For oh! to dry a mother's tears,
Another babe may bloom;

But what remains on earth for him
Whose last is in the tomb?

To think his child is blest above-
To hope their parting brief,—

These, these may soothe-but death alone
Can heal a father's grief.

DALE.

THE FATHER'S BLESSING.

"The Lord bless thee, and keep thee."

AY he who erst on Calvary bled,

With all his love, my daughter, bless thee;
Soft dews of mercy o'er thee shed,
Sustain thy soul when woes oppress thee;
May his unfading rays illume

Life's wilderness of guilt and gloom,
Thy star of hope,-thy rock of faith,-
Thy light in darkness,-life in death.
Though clouds invest that awful throne,
No mortal eye may gaze upon,
One kindly beam breaks forth above,
One ray of everlasting love!

On earth 'tis but a meteor streaming,
In heaven a son of glory beaming,

The gauds of earth are frail as fair
Fix then thy warm affections there
To him thy hopes immortal raise,
And win the love that angels praise.

WOMAN.

WOMAN! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and ill to please,
And variable as the shade,

By the light quivering aspen made,

When pain and anguish ring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!

WOMAN.

DALE.

SCOTT.

HE very first

Of human life must spring from Woman's breast; Your first small words are taught you from her lips; Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing, When men have shrunk from the ignoble care Of watching the last hour of him who led them.

BYRON.

WOMAN.

OMAN! experience might have told me,
That all must love thee who behold thee;

Surely experience might have taught

Thy firmest promises are nought;

But, placed in all thy charms before me,

All I forget but to adore thee.

Oh memory, thou choicest blessing,

When joined with hope, when still possessing;

But how much cursed by every lover
When hope is fled, and passion's over.
Woman, that fair and fond deceiver,
How prompt are striplings to believe her!
How throbs the pulse when first we view
The eye that rolls to glossy blue,
Or sparkles black, or mildly throws
A beam from under hazel brows!
How quick we credit every oath,
And hear her plight the willing troth!
Fondly we hope 'twill last for aye,
When lo! she changes in a day.
This record will for ever stand,

"Woman, thy vows are traced in sand."

BYRON.

WOMAN.

If I was

To a woman I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. hungry or thirsty, wet or sick, they did not hesitate, like men, to perform a generous action; in so free and kind a manner did they contribute to my relief, that if I was dry, I drank the sweeter draught; and if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel with a double relish."LEDI ARD.

LACE the white man on Afric's coast,

Whose swarthy sons in blood delight,
Who of their scorn to Europe boast,
And paint their very demons white:
There, while the sterner sex disdains

To soothe the woes they cannot feel,
Woman will strive to heal his pains,

And weep for those she cannot heal:
Hers is warm Pity's sacred glow;

From all her stores, she bears a part,
And bids the spring of hope re-flow,
That languished in the fainting heart.