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THE CRADLE.

HOW steadfastly she'd worked at it!

How lovingly had drest

With all her would-be-mother's wit

That little rosy nest!

How longingly she'd hung on it !—
It sometimes seemed, she said,
There lay beneath its coverlet
A little sleeping head.

He came at last, the tiny guest,

Ere bleak December fled;

That rosy nest he never prest...

Her coffin was his bed.

BEFORE SEDAN.

66 The dead hand clasped a letter."

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

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What was the white you touched,

There, at his side?

Paper his hand had clutched

Tight ere he died ;— Message or wish, may be ;—

Smooth the folds out and see.

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Hardly the worst of us

Here could have smiled!

Only the tremulous

Words of a child ;

Prattle, that has for stops

Just a few ruddy drops.

Look. She is sad to miss,

Morning and night,

His-her dead father's-kiss;

Tries to be bright,

Good to mamma, and sweet.
That is all. "Marguerite."

Ah, if beside the dead

Slumbered the pain !

Ah, if the hearts that bled

Slept with the slain !

If the grief died ;—But no ;—
Death will not have it so.

M

Ο

THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE.

A SKETCH IN A CEMETERY.

UT from the City's dust and roar,

You wandered through the open door:

Paused at a plaything pail and spade

Across a tiny hillock laid;

Then noted on your dexter side

Some moneyed mourner's "love or pride";
And so,―beyond a hawthorn-tree,
Showering its rain of rosy bloom

Alike on low and lofty tomb,-
You came upon it-suddenly.

How strange! The very grasses' growth
Around it seemed forlorn and loath;

The very ivy seemed to turn

Askance that wreathed the neighbour urn.

The slab had sunk; the head declined,

And left the rails a wreck behind.

No name; you traced a "6,"

—a "7,"

Part of "affliction" and of "Heaven";

And then, in letters sharp and clear, You read-O Irony austere !— "Tho' lost to Sight, to Mem'ry dear."

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