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THE GRANDMOTHER.
Tidings came of the vessel's loss,
And his young wife pined away;—
She had known but a flower's fragile life,
And she had a flower's decay.
But their mother thinks not now of the dead,
Nor of her long despair;
For her heart is full of the joy of life,
And the boy who is seated there.
His brow is glad, and his eyes are clear,
And she sees in him revived
The buoyant mirth of those early years
Which she has herself survived.
He is as her youth returned again—
A hope bequeathed by the past;
And affection but rivets a tenderer bond,
Because that bond is its last.
L. E. L.
