A MEMENTO OF MY BROTHER'S CHILD.

Saturday Advertiser, Issue 52, 8 July 1876, Page 3

A MEMENTO OF MY BROTHER'S CHILD.

{Original.) Why for thy child such frantic sorrow, By death laid early in the tomb ? It haply spared him from a morrow Of worse and darker ills to come. Thy trial is hut of an hour,Then why of God wilt thou despair, Who in its morning took thy flower, While it with dew was sweet and fair. Ere from its freshness it had parted, By baffled passion’s sultry glare, Till it was seen to droop sore-hearted, Gnawed by the canker-worm of care. Ah me! ah me! what sorrows boding, Await us through this pilgrimage ? What ills, what cares, what griefs corroding, To wear us down from youth to age ? How few, how few, of life’s gay dawning, Beat out the promise of their morn, And tread life’s vale ’mid pitfalls yawning, To reach in peace its final bourne. Think not of each grace that delighted— In prattling voice and dimpling fold: The promise of bold vigor blighted, Now that thy darling’s stiff and cold. But think of him in that bright centre, Among the pure and undefiled, 1 Where no one e’er can hope to enter, But who comes as a little child. Dugald Ferguson.