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TO A DEAF AND DUMB LITTLE GIRL.

LIKE a loose island on the wide expanse,
Unconscious floating on the fickle sea,
Herself her all, she lives in privacy;
Her waking life as lovely as a trance,
Doomed to behold the universal dance,
And never hear the music which expounds
The solemn step, coy slide, the merry bounds,
The vague, mute language of the countenance.
In vain for her I smooth my antic rhyme;
She cannot hear it, all her little being
Concentred in her solitary seeing-

What can she know of beaut[eous] or sublime?
And yet methinks she looks so calm and good,
God must be with her in her solitude.

THE GOD-CHILD.

I STOOD beside thee in the holy place,
And saw the holy sprinkling on thy brow,

And was both bond and witness to the vow
Which own'd thy need, confirm'd thy claims of grace;
That sacred sign which time shall not efface
Declared thee His, to whom all angels bow,
Who bade the herald saints the rite allow
To the sole sinless of all Adam's race.
That was indeed an awful sight to see;
And oft, I fear, for what my love hath done,
As voucher of thy sweet communion
In thy [sweet] Saviour's blessed mystery.
Would I might give thee back, my little one,
But half the good that I have got from thee.

TWINS.

BUT born to die, they just had felt the air,
When God revoked the mandate of their doom.
A brief imprisonment within the womb,

Of human life was all but all their share.
Two whiter souls unstained with sin or care

Shall never blossom from the fertile tomb ;-
Twin flowers that wasted not on earth their bloom,
So quickly Heaven reclaimed the spotless pair.

Let man that on his own desert relies,

And deems himself the creditor of God,

Think how these babes have earned their paradise,
How small the work of their small period :
Their very cradle was the hopeful grave,

God only made them for His Christ to save.

BOYHOOD AND GIRLHOOD.

DID our first parents in their happy seat,
New from the Maker's hand, a wedded pair,
In livelier hues their several sex declare

Than that brave boy, and that wee lady sweet?
Though not in measure nor in mind complete
They come, a perfect husband and a bride;
Yet is the seal impressed and testified
By prophet Nature, till the season meet.
The girl, a girl instinct with simple arts,
And all the innocent cunning of her sex;
A very girl, delighting to perplex
The eye of love with antic change of parts:
Burly and bold the lad, his mien denotes
One-hearted manhood even in petticoats.

To K. H. I.

THE INFANT GRANDCHILD OF A BLIND GRANDFATHER.

OH sweet new-comer to the changeful earth!
If, as some darkling seers have boldly guessed,
Thou hadst a being and a human birth,

And wert erewhile by human parents blest,
Long, long before thy present mother pressed
Thee, helpless stranger, to her fostering breast;
Then well it is for thee that thou canst not
Remember aught of face, or thing, or spot,
But all thy former life is clean forgot:
For sad it were to visit earth again,
And find it false, and turbulent, and vain ;
So little better than it was of yore,
Yet nothing find that thou hast loved before;
And restless man in haste to banish thence
The very shadow of old reverence.

But well for us that there is something yet,

Which change cannot efface, nor time forget ;

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