A MOTHER'S LOVE
Oh, beauteous were my baby's dark blue eyes,
Evermore turning to his mother's face,
So dove-like soft, yet bright as summer skies;
And pure his cheek as roses, ere the trace
Of earthly blight or stain their tints disgrace.
O'er my loved child enraptured still I hung;
No joy in life could those sweet hours replace,
When by his cradle low I watched and sung—
While still in memory's ear his father's promise rung.
Long, long I wept with weak and piteous cry
O'er my sweet infant, in its rosy bloom,
As memory brought my hours of agony
Again before my mind:—I mourned his doom;
I mourned my own: the sunny little room
In which, opress'd by sickness, now I lay,
Weeping for sorrows past, and woes to come,
Had been my own in childhood's early day.
Oh! could those years indeed so soon have passed away!
Past, as the waters of the running brook;
Fled, as the summer winds that fan the flowers!
All that remained, a word—a tone—a look,
Impressed, by chance, in those bright joyous hours;
Blossoms which, culled from youth's light fairy bowers,
Still float with lingering scent, as loath to fade,
In spite of sin's remorseless, 'whelming powers,
Above the wreck which time and grief have made.
Nursed with the dew of tears, though low in ruin laid.
The Sorrows of Rosalie.