Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/211

Rh And how his tiny shout of rapture swelled,

When closer to her bosom's core she drew

His eager lip.

Who thus, with folded arms,

And head declin'd, doth seem to count the waves,

And yet to heed them not The sorrowing sire

Doth mark the last, faint ripple, where his child

Sank down into the waters Busy thought

Turns to his far home, and those little ones

Whom sporting 'mid their favourite lawn he left,

And troubled fancy shows the weeping there,

When he shall seat them once more on his knee,

And tell them how the baby that they lov'd

Hid its pale cheek within its mother's breast,

And pin'd away and died — yet found no grave

Beneath the church-yard turf, where they might plant

The lowly mound with flowers.

But tell them, too,

O father! as a balsam for their grief,

That He who guards the water-lily's seed,

Through the long winter, and remembereth well

To bring its lip of snow and broad green leaf

Up from the darkness of its slimy cell

To meet the summer sun — will not forget

Their little brother, in his ocean bed,

But raise him from the deep, and call him forth

With brighter beauty, and a glorious form,

Never to fade or die.—