Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1856-07-31
LOSING AN INFANT.

A beautiful and touching poem by Mrs.
Lowell contains a lesson of consolation which
will win its way to many a bereayed heart.
1t was addressed to a female friend, who had
been called upon to part with beloved
child. We extract from it the following
story of the Alpine sheep: 8
They in the valleys sheltering care,s S
Soon crop the meadows tender prime, 4
And when the sod grows brown and bare :.
The shepherd strives to make them climb.
ITO airy shelves of pasture green - Is ~
That hang along the mountain side. g
Where grass and flowers together lean, s,ssEs
And down through mist,the sunbeam slide.
But naught can tempt the timid things ~
That steep and rugged path to try, 4
Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings
= And scared below the pastures lie.
IT'LL in his arms their lambs he takes,
Along the dizzy verge to go,
Then, needless of the riffs and breaks, y -
They follow on Ger rock and snow s;
And in those pastures lifted fair, s
More dewy soft-than lowland mead, S-ss
The shepherd drops his tender care, ~ I sls
And sheep and lambs together feed. so ~
There is truth, too, as we'll as pathos and;
beauty in the following paragraph and ac-''
campaigning comments of a contemporary
The dead child J., What bereayed parents.
heart but feels to its inmost core the dreadr
full significance of those words, SO light and
uuimportant to the common ear? How many
hearts there are around us whose chambers
are desoate, and whose portalsssits the mel,
ancboly raven, NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. 7 Let
them read these words Of hope and consols-
ton: So ssH;s fs- q Z:
LOSING AN INFANT.-Those who have
lost an infant are never, as it were, without
an infant child. The other children grew
up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer
all the changes Of mortality; but this one
alone is rendered an immortal child $ for
death has arrested it with his kindly hafshs'
ness, and blessed it into an eternal image Of
youth and innocence ssse
I'VE know not who is the author of the
above thought, but it is as beautiful as it is
true Many a mother, who has wept in pas:
sionate agony over dead babe, has lived tos
love the memory of the lost one better than
she loves the survivors. We speak not now
of the unhappy instances, when these whom
death has spared grow up to be the pain Of,
parents existence, but of the more fire.
quent cases where the ties of gratitude, so.
strong in childhood, gradually become weak
ened by absence, where the mother is almost
forgotten by the child, where babe grow up
into the stern hearted and emotiouless man.
On such occasions the parent: can scarcely
realize that the stern, selfish man " who stands
before her, was the babe she dapdled in her
arms, aud who then smiled gratefully upon
her, and she may well recall, as she often
does, the infant who died, and who still is TO-,
her the prattling, happy babe. Thus, even
in sorrow there is consolation Welay thess
child in the tomb, and weep tears of agony
as we do it; but we forget what temptations
it escapes, what changes it is preserved from.
Nor is that all: We doubt if there is .: !
mother living who does not love best to think
of her children as pure and holy infants,
than as men full grown, even though honors
may thicken around them, and thousands
call them great I.