Rest in peace, thou gentle spirit,
Throned above;

Souls like thine with God inherit
Life and love.

ACTIVE DUTY ALLEVIATES SORROW.

HANNAH MORE.

In my judgment, one of the best proofs that sorrow has had its right effect is, that it has not incapacitated for business; your business being duties. Under the pressure of heavy affliction, it is soothing to the heart to sink down into the enjoyment of a kind of sad indulgence, and to make itself believe that this is right, as it is gratifying; especially while it mixes some pious thoughts with this unprofitable tranquillity. But who can say, even after the severest loss, I have no duties, no cares in life, remaining? Much less can a tender mother say it, who has still so many looking to her advice, and, what is almost more, to her example. It is not the smallest part of the good that you may do them, to let them see what effect great trials have upon your mind, and that Christianity enables you to bear up against such a stroke. It is an excellent sign that, after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention. This will be a good criterion by which to judge of your state.

Didst thou go forth with none to comfort thee?
Didst thou no light in that dark country see?
No friend to take thee by thy little hand,
To lead thee gently to the land

Thou art happy now at last,

This painful life o'erpast;

Thou art happy now at last on heaven's

happy shore;

Amid the shining bands

Of angels thou dost stand,

And lift thy little hands

Evermore,

In the land

Of the dear departed,
Afar in the silent land!

TO A BEREAVED FATHER.

ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON.

It was a sharp stroke of a pen that told me your pretty Johnny was dead; and I felt it truly more than, to my remembrance, I did the death of any child in my lifetime. Sweet thing! and is he so quickly laid to sleep? Happy he! Though we shall have no more the pleasure of his lisping and laughing, he shall have no more the pain of crying, nor of being sick, nor of dying; and hath wholly escaped the trouble of schooling, and all other suffering of boys, and the riper and deeper griefs of riper years, this poor life being all along nothing but a linked chain of many sorrows and many deaths. Tell his mother she is now much more akin to the other world; and this will quickly be passed to us all. John is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed, as children use to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put off the love of this present world, and all things superfluous, beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down.

13

146

TO A BEREAVED MOTHER,

TO A BEREAVED MOTHER.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

SURE, to the mansions of the blest
When infant innocence ascends,
Some angel, brighter than the rest,
The spotless spirit's flight attends.
On wings of ecstasy they rise,

Beyond where worlds material roll;
Till some fair sister of the skies
Receives the unpolluted soul.

That inextinguishable beam,
With dust united at our birth,
Sheds a more dim, discolored gleam
The more it lingers upon earth.
Closed in this dark abode of clay,
The stream of glory faintly burns;
Not unobserved, the lucid ray

To its own native fount returns.

But when the Lord of mortal breath
Decrees his bounty to resume,
And points the silent shaft of death
Which speeds an infant to the tomb,

No passion fierce, nor low desire,

Has quenched the radiance of the flame;

Back to its God the living fire
Reverts, unclouded as it came.

Fond mourner, be that solace thine;
Let Hope her healing charm impart,
And soothe, with melodies divine,
The anguish of a mother's heart.
O, think! the darlings of thy love,
Divested of this earthly clod,
Amid unnumbered saints above,

Bask in the bosom of their GOD.

Of their short pilgrimage on earth
Still tender images remain :

Still, still they bless thee for their birth,
Still filial gratitude retain.

Each anxious care, each rending sigh,

That wrung for them the parent's breast, Dwells on remembrance in the sky,

Amid the raptures of the blest.

O'er thee, with looks of love, they bend;
For thee the Lord of life implore;
And oft from sainted bliss descend,
Thy wounded quiet to restore.
Oft, in the stillness of the night,
They smooth the pillow of thy bed;
Oft, till the morn's returning light,
Still watchful hover o'er thy head.

Hark! in such strains as saints employ,
They whisper to thy bosom peace;