'What ails you, child?'--she sobb'd, 'Look here!'
I saw it in the wheel entangled,
A weather-beaten rag as e'er
From any garden scarecrow dangled.
There, twisted between nave and spoke,
It hung, nor could at once be freed;
But our joint pains unloosed the cloak,
A miserable rag indeed!
' And whither are you going, child,
To-night, along these lonesome ways?'
'To Durham,' answer'd she, half wild-
'Then come with me into the chaise.'
Insensible to all relief
Sat the poor girl, and forth did send
Sob after sob, as if her grief
Could never, never have an end.
'My child, in Durham do you dwell?'
She check'd herself in her distress,
And said, 'My name is Alice Fell;
I'm fatherless and motherless.
'And I to Durham, sir, belong?
Again, as if the thought would choke
Her very heart, her grief grew strong;
And all was for her tatter'd cloak !
The chaise drove on; our journey's end
Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
As if she had lost her only friends,
She wept, nor would be pacified.
Up to the tavern door we post ;
Of Alice and her grief I told;
And I gave money to the host,
To buy a new cloak for the old :
'And let it be of duffil grey,
As warm a cloak as man can sell !'
Proud creature was she the next day,
The little orphan, Alice Fell !
The gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay, The oaks are budding, and, beneath, The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath, The silver wreath, of May.
The welcome guest of settled Spring,
The swallow, too, has come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hail'd her as she past.
Come, summer visitant, attach
To my reed roof your nest of clay, And let my ear your music catch, Low twittering underneath the thatch
At the grey dawn of day.
THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD
They grew in beauty side by side,
They fill'd one home with glee ;-
Their graves are sever'd far and wide,—
By mount, and stream, and sea.
The same fond mother bent at night
O'er each fair sleeping brow:
She had each folded flower in sight,—
Where are those dreamers now?
One, midst the forests of the West,
By a dark stream is laid-
The Indian knows his place of rest,
Far in the cedar shade.
The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one-
He lies where pearls lie deep;
He was the loved of all, yet none
O'er his low bed may weep.
One sleeps where Southern vines are drest
Above the noble slain :
He wrapt his colours round his breast,
On a blood-red field of Spain.
And one- o'er her the myrtle showers
Its leaves, by soft winds fann'd;
She faded midst Italian flowers,
The last of that bright band.
And parted thus they rest who play'd
Beneath the same green tree;
Whose voices mingled as they pray'd
Around one parent knee;
They that with smiles lit up the hall,
And cheer'd with song the hearth!--
Alas for love! if thou wert all,
And naught beyond, O, Earth!
Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhung a mole-hill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound
With joy; and oft, an unintruding guest,
I watch'd her secret toils from day to day,
How true she warp'd the moss to form her nest,
And modell'd it within with wool and clay.
And bye and bye, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue;
And there I witness'd, in the summer hours,
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.
In distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
Weep in the public roads alone;
But such a one, on English ground,
And in the broad highway I met;
Along the broad highway he came,
His cheeks with tears were wet;
Sturdy he seem'd, though he was sad ;
And in his arms a lamb he had.
He saw me, and he turn'd aside,
As if he wish'd himself to hide :
And with his coat did then essay
To wipe those briny tears away.
I follow'd him and said, 'My friend,
What ails you! wherefore weep you so?'
—‘Shame on me, sir! this lusty lamb,
He makes my tears to flow.
To-day I fetch'd him from the rock;
He is the last of all my flock.
'When I was young, a single man, And after youthful follies ran,
Though little given to care and thought,
Yet so it was, an ewe I bought;
|