MOSES.

And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maids to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrew's children. EXODUS II., 3, 5, 6.

DARKNESS still held her empire, but the morn,
With rosy fingers, from the orient hills,
Lifted the star-embroidered veil of night,

That hung in sombre foldings. The pale stars
Grew dim with watching, but oppressive sleep
Weighed not the eyelids of maternal love,
Keeping its holy vigils. O'er the couch
Of infancy a Hebrew mother bent

Her head in silent anguish-her full heart,
In that deep fervency where utterance fails,
Sent up its aspirations; and the tears

1

Dripped from her silken lashes, and like pearls
Gleamed on the tresses, that in molten gold
Bathed the fair ivory of the sleeper's neck.

She pressed the soft lips of her beauteous boy,
And as the dimples o'er his cherub face,
Circled in rosy eddies of delight,

And his warm breath, like a rich moss rose, came
Upon her cheek, of all his infant smiles,
Hoarded within a mother's heart, she thought-
And of the brilliance of his deep blue eyes,
When she had gazed into the lustrous orbs,
Thinking to search the crystal depths of mind;
And felt how very cruel was the fate

That rent the tendrils of a mother's love,
And left the wounded sympathies to bleed.

The last caress is over-the fair child

Wrapt closely in his infantile attire,
With his transparent eyelids sealed in sleep,
Within the crib of plaited rushes lies,

In helpless innocence. The mother's soul

Is leaning upon God, and her calm eye
Where resignation shines, attempering all
The burst of woman's tenderness, pursues
The fragile bark speeding upon its way,
Freighted with her heart's treasure, to the waves
And scaly monsters of the Nile exposed.

As down the stream, breasting the rippling tide, Fanned by the breath of heaven, it glided on, Now hidden by the willows-now revealedThe fitful colour on the mother's cheek Attested nature's yearnings; but when all That linked his visible being to her, fled, The torrent of her grief refused control, And for the living she did wildly pour The passionate wail of sorrow for the dead.

It was the hour of noon. The flaming sun Looked from his zenith throne with glaring eye; And the papyrus and the asphodel