Puslapio vaizdai
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The life of the beggar is almost spent,
His cheek is pale and his form is bent,
And he answereth low, with meek content,
The sneers of the rude and bold.

All day by the road hath the beggar sat,
Weary and faint and dry,

In silence, patiently holding his hat,
And turning his sightless eye,
As with cruel jest and greeting grim
At his hollow cheek and eyeball dim,
The traveller tosses a copper at him,
And hastily passeth by.

To himself the blind old man doth hum
A song of his boyhood's prime,
And his lean, white fingers idly drum

On his threadbare knee, keeping time;
And oft, when the gay bob-o-link is heard,
The song of the youth-hearted yellow bird,
The jar of life, and the traveller's word,

And the noise of the children's play,

He starts and grasps with a hurried hand
The top of his smooth-worn cane,
And striketh it sturdily into the sand-

Then layeth it down again;

While his black little spaniel, beautiful Spring, That he keeps at his buttonhole with a string, Jumps up, and his bell goes ting-a-ling! ling! As he yelps at the idle train.

He sits by the great high road all day,

The beggar blind and old;

The locks on his brow are thin and gray,
And his lips are blue and cold ;

THE WASHERWOMAN.

Yet he murmureth never, day nor night,
But seeing the world by his inner sight,
He patiently waits, with a heart all light,
Till the sum of his life shall be told.

C. G. EASTMAN.

THE WASHERWOMAN.

AT the north end of our village stands,
With gable black and high,

A weather-beaten house,-I've stopt
Often as I went by

To see the strip of bleaching grass
Slipped brightly in between
The long straight rows of hollyhocks,
And currant bushes green;

The clumsy bench beside the door,
And oaken washing-tub,

Where poor old Rachel used to stand,
And rub, and rub, and rub !

Her blue-checked apron speckled with
The suds, so snowy white;
From morning when I went to school
Till I went home at night,

She never took her sunburnt arms
Out of the steaming tub:

We used to say 'twas weary work
Only to hear her rub.

131

With sleeves stretched straight upon
The washed shirts used to lie ;
By dozens I have counted them
Some days, as I went by.

The burly blacksmith battering at

His red-hot iron bands
Would make a joke of wishing that
He had old Rachel's hands!

the

grass

And when the sharp and ringing strokes
Had doubled up his shoe

As crooked as old Rachel's back,

He used to say 'twould do.

And every village housewife, with
A conscience clear and light,
Would send for her to come and wash
An hour or two at night.

Her hair beneath her cotton cap
Grew silver-white and thin;
And the deep furrows in her face
Ploughed all the roses in.

Yet patiently she kept at work,—
We school girls used to say,

The smile about her sunken mouth
Would quite go out some day.

Nobody ever thought the spark
That in her sad eyes shone,
Burned outward from a living soul
Immortal as their own.

THE BRICKMAKER.

And though a tender flush sometimes
Into her cheek would start,
Nobody dreamed old Rachel had
A woman's loving heart.

At last she left her heaps of clothes
One quiet Autumn day,

And stript from off her sunburnt arms
The weary suds away;

That night within her moonlit door
She sat alone, her chin

Sunk in her hand,-her eyes shut up,
As if to look within.

Her face uplifted to the star

That stood so sweet and low Against old crazy Peter's house(He loved her long ago!)

Her heart had worn her body to
A handful of poor dust,—
Her soul was gone to be arrayed
In marriage-robes, I trust.

THE BRICKMAKER.

I.

LET the blinded horse go round
Till the yellow clay be ground,
And no weary arms be folded
Till the mass to brick be moulded.

ALICE CARY.

133

In no stately structures skilled,
What the temple we would build ?
Now the massive kiln is risen-
Call it palace call it prison;
View it well: from end to end

Narrow corridors extend,—

Long, and dark, and smothered aisles:Choke its earthly vaults with piles

Of the resinous yellow pine; Now thrust in the fettered fireHearken! how he stamps with ire, Treading out the pitchy wine; Wrought anon to wilder spells,

Hear him shout his loud alarms;
See him thrust his glowing arms
Through the windows of his cells.

But his chains at last shall sever;
Slavery lives not for ever;
And the thickest prison wall
Into ruin yet must fall.
Whatsoever falls away

Springeth up again, they say;

Then, when this shall break asunder,

And the fire be freed from under,

Tell us what imperial thing

From the ruin shall upspring?

There shall grow a stately building,
Airy dome and columned walls;
Mottoes writ in richest gilding

Blazing through its pillared halls.

In those chambers, stern and dreaded, They, the mighty ones, shall stand;

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