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 per secuting foes,

And I asked of Heaven if ills like these must mar thy sweet 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 fear 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 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 tint 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!

ALARIC WATTS.

HOME AND CLASS WORK.

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