159

H

THE CRADLE.

OW 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.

"The dead hand clasped a letter."

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

HERE, in this leafy place,

Quiet he lies,

Cold, with his sightless face
Turned to the skies;

'Tis but another dead;

All you can say is said.

Carry his body hence,—

Kings must have slaves;

Kings climb to eminence

Over men's graves:

So this man's eye is dim ;-
Throw the earth over him.

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.

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.

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."