FOR CHII-DREN. 231

Perhaps indulgent nature meant,
By such a lamp bestowed,

To bid the traveller, as he went,
Be careful where he trod ;

Nor crush a worm whose useful light
Might serve, however small,
To show a stumbling-stone by night,
And save him from a fall.
Whate’er she meant, this truth divino,
Is legible and plain,
*Tis power Almighty bids him shine,
Nor bids him shine in vain.
Cowper.

 

THE MOTHER AND BABE IN THE
SNOW.!

THE cold winds swept the mountain height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And ‘mid the cheerless hours of night,
A mother wandered with her child ;
As through the drifting snow she pressed,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.

And colder still the winds did blow,
And darker hours of night came on,
And deeper grew the drifts of snow—
Her limbs were chilled, her strength was gone,
“Oh God!” she cried, in accents wild,
“If J must perish—save my child!”

1 The circumstances alluded to in these lines (which are
taken from an American newspaper) occurred a few ycars
ago in Vermont, United States,