THE CROCUS. BENEATH the sunny autumn sky, Around the soft green swelling mound We scooped the earth away, And buried deep the crocus bulbs Against a coming day. "These roots are dry, and brown, and sere, Why plant them here?" he said, "To leave them all the winter long So desolate and dead." "Dear child, within each sere dead form There sleeps a living flower, And angel-like it shall arise In spring's returning hour." Ah, deeper down-cold, dark, and chill, We buried our heart's flower, But angel-like shall he arise In spring's immortal hour. In blue and yellow from its grave Springs up the crocus fair, And God shall raise those bright blue eyes, Those sunny waves of hair. Not for a fading summer's morn, Not for a fleeting hour, But for an endless age of bliss, Shall rise our heart's dear flower. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. A DIRGE. CALM on the bosom of thy God, Dust, to its narrow house beneath! Lone are the paths and sad the bowers In heaven is now thine own. FELICIA HEMANS. TO A BEREAVED FATHER. I CANNOT, I dare not say, Weep not. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus, and, surely, He allows you to weep; surely, there is a "needs be" that you feel a heaviness under such a trial. But O, let hope and joy mitigate your heaviness. I know not how this or a former trial shall work for your good, but it is enough that God knows. He that said, "All things shall work together for good to them that love God," excepts not from this promise the sorest trial. You devoted your son to God; you cannot doubt that he accepted the surrender. If he has been hid in the chamber of the grave from the evil of sin, and from the evil of suffering, let not your eye be evil, when God is good. What you chiefly wished for him, and prayed on his behalf, was spiritual and heavenly blessings. If the greatest thing you wished for is accomplished, at the season and in the manner Infinite Wisdom saw best, refuse not to be comforted; you know not what work and joy have been waiting for him in that world, where God's "servants shall serve him." Should you sorrow immoderately when you have such ground of hope that he, and his other Parent, are rejoicing in what you lament? I know that nature will feel; and I believe suppressing its emotions in such cases is not profitable, either to soul or body; but, I trust, though you mourn, God will keep you from murmuring, and that you shall have to glory in your tribulation and infirmity, while the power of Christ is manifested thereby. ERSKINE. THE DEATH LULLABY. SLEEP, baby, sleep! Sleep, baby, sleep! Sweetly thine eye is closing, Sleep, angel baby, sleep! Not in thy cradle-bed Shall rest thy little head, DOES it not cast a nameless charm around an early death, to consider how entirely hidden from a child are all the black spots in this world of sin? Escaping not only the pollution of the world, but the knowledge that it exists-being old enough to trust the Saviour, though too young to know the dire effects of sin-they experience just enough of the evil of the fall to bring them in as subjects of the redemption. The little ones of Christ's flock are taken to the heavenly fold without coming into open contact with the destroyer of souls, and ere he has had time to spread his gilded baits before their eyes. The "depths of Satan"-those mysteries of evil by which he enslaves millions of victims -are all unknown to them. They have never been bound down by the iron chain of habit. Nor have they encountered temptations demanding a constant warfare, as those who have come to mature years, and who may have received the largest measures of the Spirit, know to their cost. Are they not then qualified for a different mission in the economy of the kingdom of heaven, and for holding a different place in the glorified company-even as those who have endured a great fight of afflictions, and been pre-eminent exhibitions of God's grace, are thereby fitted for a higher sphere? May we not suppose that their Father in heaven, who early transplants |