POEM FOR RECITATION.

MY sweet little neighbor Bessie I thought was busy with play, When she turned, and brightly questioned, "Say, what is the Easter day?" "Has nobody told you, darling— Do they 'Feed His Lambs' like this?" I gathered her to my bosom, And gave her a tender kiss. Away went the cloak for dolly, And away went dolly too, As again she eagerly questioned, With eyes so earnest and blue: "Is it like birthdays or Christmas— Or like Thanksgiving Day; Do we just be good like Sunday, Or run and frolic and play? "I know there's flowers to it, And that is most all I know; I've got a lovely rosebush, And a bud begins to grow." Then in words most few and simple I told to the gentle child The story whose end is Easter— The Life of the Undefiled. Told of the manger of Bethlehem, And about the glittering star That guided the feet of the shepherds Watching their flocks from afar, Told of the lovely Mother, And the Baby who was born To live on the earth among us Bearing its sorrows and scorn. And then I told of the life He lived Those wonderful thirty years, Sad, weary, troubled, forsaken, In this world of sin and tears, Until I came to the shameful death That the Lord of Glory died, Then the tender little maiden Uplifted her voice and cried. I came at length to the garden Where they laid His form away, And then in the course of telling I came to the Easter day— The day when sorrowing women Came there to the grave to moan, And the lovely shining angels Had rolled away the stone. I think I made her understand As well as childhood can, About the glorified risen life Of him who was God and Man. This year the fair Easter lilies Will gleam through a mist of tears, For I shall not see sweet Bessie In all of the coming years. When the snow lay white and thickest She quietly went away To learn from the lips of angels The meaning of Easter day. We put on the little body The garments worn in life, And laid her deep in the frozen earth Away from all noise and strife. We took all the dainty playthings, And the dollies new and old, And placed them in a sacred spot With a tress of shining gold. Were it not for the star of Bethlehem, And the dawn of Easter day, It would be to us most bitter To put our darling away. But we know that as the hard brown earth Holds lilies regal and white, So the lifeless, empty, useless clay Held once an angel of light. And I hope on the Easter morning To look from the grave away, Thinking not of the child that was, But the child that is to-day. Emily Baker Smalle.