570 J [Dec. 
THE VISION OF TEARS. 
Besipe her death-pale daughter’s bed 
The mourning mother stands ; 
The day is dead—slow night hath fled— 
Yet still the mother’s hands, 
All night and day, are lifted there 
In many a soul-taught, silent prayer ; 
And still the sigh of dumb despair, 
Love’s wild farewell—the natural knelf 
Of hopes and hours remembered well— 
Goes forth upon the sickened air, 
And makes the virgin-sufferer weep 
When most her lids seem sealed in sleep. 
A delicate and graceful girl, 
A grown-up child was she ; 
A clear and ever tranquil pearl 
In life’s all-heaving sea. 
Her spirit like a flower sprung uy, 
In love’s own light she grew ; 
Filling her heart, that fragrant cuys, 
With passions pure as dew ; 
But gifted with so high a sense, 
Formed in such utter innocence— 
So finely strung, so quickly wrung, 
A whisper from an infant’s tongue 
Affected her with thoughts intense : 
’T was rare to see, in one so young, 
That deep, divine intelligence. 
And now, when death is at her side, 
She grieveth less, in pain or pride, 
To feel the cloud of sickness fall 
Over her spirit, like a pall,— 
Than for the trust, the ties that must 
Dissolve upon her darkened dust. 
She weeps to see her mother weep, 
And sickens with her sighs ; 
She cannot keep her soul asleep, 
Though night be in her eyes. © 
At length the moaning mother yields ~ 
Her grief to slumber’s shadowy folds ; 
And lo! along its phantom-fields 
A vision she beholds. 
She sees a band of beauty glide, 
A troop of children fair, 
With snow-eclipsing brows, and hair 
In heaven’s first sunshine dyed. 
In each uplifted white hand shews 
A torch, whose flame is purer far 
Than ever fell from sun or star ; 
Tis Life, without its veil of woes ; 
The Mind that brightens with our birth, 
The innate heaven of human earth. 
If as a sign those torches shine, 
The light within us is divine. 
