And lay us by the pretty marble stone,
To which our father dear was wont to go,
And where, in spring, the sweet primroses blow;
Then, weep not, mother!" But she wept the more;
While the sad father his affliction bore
Like one in whom all consciousness was dead,
Save that he wrung his hands and rocked his head,
And murmured oft this short and troubled prayer--
"O God! look on me, and my children spare!"


XIII.

Their little arms still round each other clung,
When their last sleep death's shadow o'er them flung!
And still they slept, and fainter grew their breath--
Faint and more faint, until their sleep was death.
Deep, but unmurmured was the mother's grief,
For in her FAITH she sought and found relief;
Yea, while she mourned a daughter and a son,
She looked to heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!"
But, oh! the father no such solace found--
Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round;
He was a stranger to the Christian's hope,
And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop
On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean;
Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene--
Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul--
Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control;
For though a grounded faith he ne'er had known,