"Till with that lullaby I feel

Sleep's dewy mantle o'er me wreathing!
How sweet the sound, how welcome, dear,
Which tells me what I love is near !

But first, ere I can calm recline,

In silent prayer I kneel beside thee,
And sue each blessing may be thine,
Long forfeited, or still denied me.
Now one last kiss with caution given,
And I resign my watch to Heaven.

SONG.

LEAVES quiver in the balmy air, the moon grows bright above, Beauty is beaming every where,— 't is just the hour for love! So calm, so silent, I could deem beneath yon arch of blue Breathe none beside myself, dear love, the nightingale and you!

The mazy brook is whispering now, a soft tale to the flowers, The night-breeze freshens on my brow, how sweet these moonlight hours!

And sweet the twilight path that guides my footsteps through the dew,

Each eve, to this green dell, my love, the nightingale and you!

Now some seek halls of revelry, where flows the ruddy wine;
And merry may their banquet be,—a deeper joy is mine!
They choose companions many a one, I am content with two,—
The nightingale and you, my love! the nightingale and you!
Literary Souvenir.

THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.

BY ALARIC A. WATTS.

Fare thee well, thou first and fairest !

BURNS.

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 lip 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 persecuting foes,— And I asked of heaven, if ills like these must mar thy youth's repose!

-half blinded by my tearsI gazed upon thy quiet faceTill 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 fears 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 heart had scarce thy welcome breathed, ere my hopes were wrapt in shade.

O 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 't was 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

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 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 sweetTwin 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 taint 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!

THINK OF ME.

THINK of me, and I'll tell thee when

The moment of that thought shall be;
When yon sweet star is rising, then,

Oh then, beloved, think of me!
Yes, let thy memory on me rest,

When, pale and beautiful as now,
Yon planet sinks beneath the west,
With dewy light and silver brow.

When the blue arch of heaven is bright,
When not a shadow frowns above,

The beauty of its placid light

Will seem the emblem of our love.
When clouds are gathering on its way,

And the black storms around thee wait,

The darkness of its shrouded ray

Will seem the emblem of our fate.

L. E. L.

THE EXILE.

BY MISS. BANNERMAN.

YE hills of my country, soft-fading in blue,
Ye seats of my childhood, for ever adieu!
Yet not for a brighter your skies I resign,
When my wandering footsteps revisit the Rhine;
But sacred to me, is the roar of the wave

That mingles its tide with the blood of the brave,
Where the blasts of the trumpet for battle combine,
And the heart was laid low that gave rapture to mine.

Ye scenes of remembrance that sorrow beguiled,
Your uplands I leave for the desolate wild;
For nature is nought to the eye of despair
But the image of hopes that have vanished in air:
Again, ye fair blossoms of flower and of tree,

Ye shall bloom to the morn, though ye bloom not for me;
Again your lone wood-paths that wind by the stream,
Be the haunt of the lover-to hope—and to dream.

But never to me shall the summer renew

The bowers where the days of my happiness flew;
Where my soul found her partner, and thought to bestow
The colours of heaven on the dwellings of woe!
Too faithful recorders of times that are past,
The Eden of Love that was ever to last!

Once more may soft accents your wild echoes fill,
And the young and the happy be worshippers still.

To me ye are lost!—but your summits of green
Shall charm through the distance of many a scene;
In woe, and in wandering, 'mid deserts, return
Like the soul of the dead to the perishing urn!
Ye hills of my country! farewell ever-more,

As I cleave the dark waves of your rock-rugged shore,

I ask of the hovering gale if it come

From the oak-towering woods on the mountains of home.