Poems for Children Sigourney/On a Child two and a half years old, who wiped the tears of his Father with his dying hand
On a Child of two and a half years old, who wiped the tears of his Father with his dying hand.
Pale was the little polish'd brow
That lately bloomed so fair,
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,
A guiding-cherub to that home
Where every tear is dry.