Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/306

302 smart liveries powdered with the insinuating flakes. Keep your gills close, my gay piscatorials, and don't nibble at those floating nodules, mistaking them for crumbs of Naples biscuit. In the same nook is a prim-bush, badly trimmed, reaching forth its angular arms and claw-shaped fingers to gather all it can. Methinks it is of the miser-genus. Friend Prim, dreamest thou that thou hast gotten gold? Well, make the most of thy cold handfuls. Peradventure it may last thee as long as the winged riches in which thy betters trust.

While the beauties of the garden, bear their rebuke as they may, lo! there passeth by a blighted bud of our own higher nature. An infant with its funeral train, goeth slowly homeward to its last repose. They divide the snow-wreaths to lay it by the side of its young mother. Thou canst nestle no more into her bosom, poor babe, it is marble cold. She stretcheth forth no fond arm to welcome and enfold thee. Only a few times didst thou gaze upon her, ere she hasted away to the angels. Yet, shall not the bright drops of that affection, which were shed into her heart amid extremest agony, be gathered up in Heaven, and flow on as the river of life, an eternal stream? Oh! when a mother meets on high, The babe she left in its infancy, Is there not then, for all her fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrows, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?"