DEATH OF AN INFANT.*
��D EATH found strange beauty on that polish'd brow, And dash'd it out. There was a tint of rose On cheek and lip. He touched the veins with ice, And the rose faded.
Forth from those blue eyes There spake a wishful tenderness, a doubt Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound The silken fringes of those curtaining lids For ever.
There had been a murmuring sound, With which the babe would claim its mother's ear, Charming her even to tears. The spoiler set The seal of silence.
But there beam'd a smile, So fix'd, so holy, from that cherub brow, Death gazed, and left it there. He dar'd not steal The signet-ring of heaven.
- This little poem has been inserted by mistake in one of the American
editions of the late Mrs. Hemans. Though this is accounted, by the real author, as a high honour, it is still proper to state that it was originally composed at Hartford, in the winter of 1824, and comprised in a volume of poems published in Boston in 1827. Should other testimony be necessary, it may be mentioned that a letter from Mrs. Hemans, to a friend in this country, pointing out some poems in that volume which pleased her, designated, among others, the " Death of an Infant."
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