Your heights; and with an ardent eye

View earth at this most holy time,

While universal charity

Urges my honest earnest prayer on high,
That as yon glorious sun doth chase

The darkness from that western sky,

Heaven's brighter sun, with quickened race,

May drive the gloom of sin from earth's fair face.

THE DYING DAUGHTER TO HER

INFIDEL FATHER.

"The hour is come! the hour is come!

My father I must hence.

My eyes grow dim, my senses swim,

Death's shades become more dense.

Oh! in this dark, this dreadful hour,
Whose aid must I implore?

Speak, father dear, the hour draws near

When I shall be no more.

"Must I believe what thou hast taught,

Or what my mother's tongue,

96

THE DYING DAUGHTER TO HER INFIDEL FATHER.

With anxious care, and fervent prayer,

Has taught my whole life long?

Speak! must I spurn the Nazarine,
And trample on his blood:

And madly brave the rushing wave,

Of Jordan's swelling flood?"

Those accents pierced the father's heart,

They melted down his soul;

With features wild, he viewed his child,
With grief beyond control.

He saw the sepulchre's dark shades

Were gathering thick and fast;
He felt his heart with terror start;
He heard the trumpet's blast.

It echoed o'er the vaulted heavens ;
It shook both earth and hell;

The stars all fled; it roused the dead;
It shook his faith as well.

"Believe the truths thy mother taught!"

He cried in accents wild;

And in his arms, with frenzied love,
He clasped his dying child.

THE DYING DAUGHTER TO HER INFIDEL FATHER. 97

"Oh! father, now I die in peace,"

She said, as on his breast

She laid her head, and joined the dead

In their eternal rest.

The father kissed his withered flower;

And in that solemn hour,

He kissed the rod a gracious God
Had sent in love and power.

H

MY CHILD.

FAIR children!-why they're common, and their death

Is common too, and so I used to think;

But how life's rising sun doth clear the haze
Of its dim dawn! My lot has been to gaze
Since then upon a flower which on the brink
Of life a moment bloomed, and whose breath
Awhile perfumed my sacred cottage bower
With more than sweets of Araby. The dower
I deem'd divine;-an ornament bestowed

To beautify and grace my lov'd abode;