MOTHER MARGERY. Life had fresher hopes when she was younger, Faster seemed her true heart graveward tending She was mother of the dead and scattered, With a courage that had never fitted Woes enough to mar a stouter breast: Raised her spirit from our chilly sphere. They were footsteps on her Jacob's ladder; MOTHER MARGERY. Of that Heaven where anguish never flashes Of this blighting, blighted world of ours! All her power was a love of goodness; So she walked, while feeble limbs allowed her, She might meet with could no more than crowd her So she lived, an anchoress of sorrow, Heaven flashed round her joys beyond her hoping, GEORGE S. BURLEIGH. THE WIDOW AND CHILD. HOME they brought her warrior dead; "She must weep, or she will die!" Then they praised him, soft and low; Yet she neither spake nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee. Like summer tempest came her tears: "Sweet my child, I live for thee!" ALFRED TENNYSON. LOUIS XV. THE king, with all the kingly train, had left his Pompadour be hind, And forth he rode in Senart's wood, the royal beasts of chase to find. That day, by chance, the monarch mused; and turning suddenly away, He struck alone into a path that far from crowds and courtiers lay. He saw the pale green shadows play upon the brown untrodden earth; He saw the birds around him flit, as if he were of peasant birth; He saw the trees, that know no king but him who bears a wood land axe; He thought not-but he looked about, like one who still in thinking lacks. Then close to him a footstep fell, and glad of human sound was he; The man upon his weary back a coffin bore of rudest frame. 66 Why, who art thou?" exclaimed the king; "and what is that I see thee bear?” "I am a laborer in the wood, and 'tis a coffin for Pierre. LOUIS XV. Close by the royal hunting-lodge you may have often seen him toil; But he will never work again, and I for him must dig the soil." The laborer ne'er had seen the king, and this he thought was but a man; Who made at first a moment's pause, and then anew his talk be gan: "I think I do remember now-he had a dark and glancing eye; And I have seen his sturdy arm with wondrous stroke the pickaxe 66 ply. Pray tell me, friend, what accident can thus have killed our good Pierre ?" "O! nothing more than usual, sir: he died of living upon air. 'Twas hunger killed the poor good man, who long on empty hopes relied; He could not pay gabelle and tax, and feed his children- so he Our children's food is eaten up by courtiers, mistresses, and glory." The king looked hard upon the man, and afterwards the coffin eyed; Then spurred to ask, of Pompadour, how came it that the peasants died. JOHN STERLING. |