LANGUID and dying a sweet boy lay
Watching the gleam of each crimson ray
That tinted the clouds with a radiant crest,
As the sun sank peacefully down to rest ;
And the stars came forth with their silver light,
And the fair day slept on the breast of night.
Then the child looked up with a peaceful smile
"Mother," he whispered she wept the while
" Like the last faint gleam of the lingering day
The boy, ere the morn, will have passed away."
Then a tear-drop gleamed in her soft blue eye,
For she knew that her beautiful boy must die.
Flowers, sweet brother !" a little girl cried
And lightly she sprang to the sick boy's side ;
"Roses, and lilies, and violets blue,
Spangled and gemmed with the evening dew !"
And the eye of the dying one brightened with pleasure
As over the pillow she'scattered her treasure.
For each dewy dingle the sweet boy knew,
Where strawberries nestled and wild flowers grew,
He lifted the buds and he turned them o'er,
For he knew he should visit their haunts no more ;
He felt from them all he must soon be riven,
And he mournfully -sighed," are there flowers in
Heaven?"
" There are, there are, my beautiful child ;
Not all the loveliness, pure and wild,
Of the blossoms of earth, so dewy and fair,
^May vie with a leaf of the flowers that are there ;
Here, they are fragile and wither away,
There, they are fadeless and never decay.
Then the child's face lit with a radiant light,
And the mother watched through the long, long
night ;
Till the wild bird carolled his songs of joy,
And the sun looked in on that beautiful boy ;
But an endless morn to the child was given,
He had gone to d"well with the " flowers in Heaven."
