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And speechless lay the baby-boy,
His parents' pride and care.
The struggle and the fever-pang
That shook his frame were past,
And there, with fix'd and wishful glance
He lay,—to breathe his last.
Upon his sorrowing father's face
He gazed with dying eye,
Then raised a cold and feeble hand
His starting tears to dry.
And so he wip'd those weeping eyes
Even with his parting breath;
Oh! tender deed of infant love,
How beautiful in death!
Yes,—ere that gentle soul forsook
The fainting, trembling clay,
It caught the spirit of that world
Where tears are wip'd away.
And still its cherish'd image gleams
Upon the parent's eye,
