AN EPISODE FROM LIFE

V.

Was it want, disease, or cold,

That our little firstling killed? Or was sorrow over it rolled

With its mother's milk distilled? We knew not-its wings were furled When the night struck on the moor, And I never dare tell the world

The thoughts that my bosom tore.

VI.

Oh, was it a world of love,

The work of the Perfect Mind; Did God look down from above, To human misery blind?

Or was it a howling hell,

Which the rich escaped by gold, While the poor were doomed to yell, In its flames of torment rolled?

VII.

From the moors we now looked down
On Scarborough grand and still;
'Twas night when we reached the town,
Which lay at the foot of the hill.
We saw churches with gilded domes,

Where the golden cross was set,

And balconied marble homes,

Where the joyous circles met.

VIII.

Oh! was it a City of Gold,
Like Aladdin's garden fair,
Empalaced where Ocean rolled
His music on fragrant air?

AN EPISODE FROM LIFE.

""Tis too fine for work like ours,"

To my wife I, sighing, said;

"And where, 'mong its halls and bowers, Shall we lay our baby dead?”

IX.

While the faint moon sadly glowed
O'er the sea-side rocky tops,
A river of people flowed

In the light of lamps and shops.

I stared in each passing face

With a feeling of anguish wild,

As if on some brow to trace

The thought of a dear dead child.

X.

We knocked at many a door

In Scarborough's lordly town,
For a place of rest, before

The midnight in snow came down;
But all were "full," and we wept;
A dead lamb no fold could find.

Oh! our little darling slept,

And heard not the word unkind.

XI.

My wife sat down by the gate
Of a mansion, ill and tired;
She had not seemed so desolate
Since our only Joy expired;
She rocked on her frozen breast
Our bird with a lullaby,

As if it had stirred in its nest,

With its well-known moaning cry.

AN EPISODE FROM LIFE.

XII.

Still silently fell the snow;
From theatres carriages sped,
And my wife rocked to and fro
In grief o'er our baby dead.
Just as she reeled in a faint,

With sickness, a form came past,
With the tender soul of a saint,

And found us shelter at last.

XIII.

Oh! agony parched my lip,
Despair did my bosom whelm,
My brain staggered like a ship.
With Misery at the helm;
While wandering by the strand,

I thought of a watery shroud,

But Mercy's benignant hand

Was stretched through Misfortune's cloud.

XIV.

Our babe in its quiet sleep

Lay shrouded as soft as balm, And the children came to peep

At its beauty, marbly calm;

'Twas touched with diviner grace

Than when it had lived and smiled,

And hunger would leave its trace

No more on our darling child.

XV.

O'er its beauty infantile

A nimbus of glory fell: There lingered a rose-bud smile, A beautiful, peaceful spell;

AN EPISODE FROM LIFE.

The fingers of Nature wove

Its ringlets, which clustered free;
And pure was its breast of love,
As the wild young swans may be.

XVI.

In a plain deal box we shrined
Its delicate little form,
"Twas not with soft satin lined,
Its icy repose to warm.
From suffering it was freed,

Released was the prisoned dove,

There was one mouth less to feed,

And one angel more above.

XVII.

The funeral day came on,

Two mourners went hand in hand, And laid it beneath the stone

In a hole filled up with sand; And when I've a pound to spare, And bright are the summer skies,

I will take my children there,

To see where their brother lies.

Sheldon Chadwick.