LINES ON A FLOWERING ACACIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 295, 27 May 1848, Page 3

LINES ON A FLOWERING ACACIA.

(By Mrs. Butler, late Fanny Kemble.)

The blossoms hang again upon the tree, As when with their sweet breath they greeted me Against my casement, on that sunny morn, When thou, first blossom of my spring, was born ! And as I lay, panting from the fierce strife With death and agony that won thy life, Their snowy clusters hung on their brown bough, E'en as upon my breast, my May-bud, thou. They seem to me thy sisters, Oh, my child ! And now the air, full of their fragrance mild, Recalls that hour, a tenfold agony Pulls at my heart-strings as I think of thee. Was it vain ! Oh, was it all in vain! That night of hope, of terror, and of pain, When from the shadowy boundaries of death I brought thee safely, breathing living breath ? Upon my heart — it was a holy shrine Full of God's praise — they laid thee, treasure mme '. And from its tender depths the blue heaven smiled, And the white blossoms bowed to thee, my child, And solemn joy of a new life was spread, Like a mysterious halo round that bed. * * • * * Alone, heart-broken, on a distant shore, Thy childless mother sits lamenting o'er [earth, Flowers, which the spring calls from this foreign Thy twins, that crowned the morning of thy birth : — How is it with thee — lost — lost — precious one ! In thy fresh spring time growing up alone ?