But as for us, it seems Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint Thy glorious features with our pencil’s point, Or woo thee to the tablet of a song, Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul A wondering witness of thy majesty, But as it presses with delirious joy To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step, And tame its rapture, with the humbling view Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand In the dread presence of the Invisible, As if to answer to its God through thee. * * * * * DEATH OF AN INFANT. DEATH found strange beauty on that polished brow And dashed 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 Forever. There had been a murmuring sound With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear, Charming her even to tears. The Spoiler set His seal of silence. But there beamed a smile So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow, Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal The signet ring of heaven. * * * * * A BUTTERFLY ON A CHILD’S GRAVE. A BUTTERFLY basked on a baby’s grave, Where a lily had chanced to grow; “Why art thou here, with thy gaudy dye, When she of the blue and sparkling eye Must sleep in the churchyard low?” Then it lightly soared through the sunny air, And spoke from its shining track: “I was a worm till I won my wings, And she whom thou mourn’st like a seraph sings, Wouldst thou call the blest one back?” Illustration: (‡ decoration) Illustration: (‡ decoration) ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. AUTHOR OF “THE SINLESS CHILD.” IT was in the year 1841 that a poetic Romance of several episodes, written in ballad style and entitled “The Sinless Child,” was published in the Southern Literary Messenger and brought its author, a woman of thirty-five years, into general prominence, and gained for her an enviable position which she ever after maintained and fortified with a series of the finest sonnets which the literature of our country affords. “Her productions,” says Reade, “are characterized rather by a passionate and lofty imagination, than by fancy, and a subtle vein of philosophy more than sentiment, though in the latter she is by no means deficient.”