A MOTHER’S LOVE.

THERE is a feeling, warm and true As that of seraphims above, It sheds its balm like Hermon’s dew; It is a tender mother’s love.

Bright is the pure incipient flame, That warms the breast of ardent youth, And dear the passion nought can tame, Inspired by beauty, virtue, truth.

Sweet is the sound of friendship’s voice, That bids each pulse to rapture move; That bids each barren scene rejoice, But sweeter far a mother’s love.

Fond is the feeling, that inspires With filial love, the tender child, With gratitude his bosom fires To her, who on his boyhood smil’d.

But placid, pure, and undefiled; (By nature is the fabric wove) By nature giv’n the savage wild, Or christian; is a mother’s love.

Mark! where of rosy health bereft, Emaciate, wan, and deadly pale, (The blood its dying cheek has left,) The infant lifts its feeble wail.

And see! the mother by its side, Sunk in dejected, tearless woe, As thro’ its veins, the ebbing tide, She views decline, with gradual flow.

No sorrowing accent strikes the ear, To tell the workings of her grief; No sob is heard, no falling tear Her burning anguish yield relief.

’Tis silent, as the breathless air, In midnight’s deepest, darkest shade; The hopeless shadow of despair, That asks not consolation’s aid.

The infant dies!—remember’d still, More precious to the soul it seems, For glowing mem’ry paints at will A thousand charms in fancy’s dreams.

That form, thro’ many a lapse of years, Comes on imagination’s wing, And oft, its mother’s soul it chears, And seems an angel’s smile to bring.

See yonder mother! on her breast In innocence her infant lays, In smiles that mark the soul at rest; How on his sleep she loves to gaze;

Her soul is in her placid eye, And rapture lights its beaming glance; How softly heaves her bosom’s sigh, In pure affection’s loveliest trance.

That glance, the rapture of the mind, Those sighs, her tranquil breast that move, Are pledges dear, that ever bind A mother’s pure, unaltered love.