IN MEMORY OF A DEAR CHILD
No Agnes now to greet me, when the daily task is done,
With many a pretty story, understood by her alone;
No more the little cheek is laid so trustfully to mine,
No more the little dimpled arm her mothers neck entwine.
She came to us when linties sang their earliest springtime lay,
And when the seasons circled once she pined and went away;
It may be that she wearied of her native heaven bereft-
What all our love when weighed against the glory she had left!
Yet ours she seemed. We watched her growth from feeblest infancy,
And felt affections hallowed ties drawn closer day by day,
So sweet and winning were her ways; no child was e'er so dear:
Oh! Surely the bereaved heart may weep a blameless tear.
We pressed her quivering lips, and wiped her brow so cold and damp,
As hope one moment brightened up her half-extinguished lamp;
What utter loneliness we felt as fast the parting neared,
And on her white and lessening face we read the fate we feared.
We saw the film spread slowly ore the little azure eye,
We saw the lips grow paler still, and heard the deep death-sigh,
And felt how fearfully intense the agony that burns
When the last bosom-heave subsides and ne'er again returns.
Oh Agnes! Ever innocent, we look to where thou art,
Convinced of all the grossness of an erring heart;
Fain would we see thy face again, fain with thee ever be:
But Oh! How pure must be the life that wins a home with thee.
