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MOTHER MARGERY.

Life had fresher hopes when she was younger,
But their dying wrung out no complaints;
Chill, and penury, and neglect, and hunger,
These to Margery were guardian saints.
When she sat, her head was, prayer-like, bending;
When she rose, it rose not any more.

Faster seemed her true heart graveward tending
Than her tired feet, weak and travel-sore.

She was mother of the dead and scattered,

;

Had been mother of the brave and fair
But her branches, bough by bough, were shattered,
Till her torn breast was left dry and bare.

Yet she knew, though sadly desolated,
When the children of the poor depart
Their earth-vestures are but sublimated,
So to gather closer in the heart.

With a courage that had never fitted
Words to speak it to the soul it blessed,
She endured, in silence and unpitied,

Woes enough to mar a stouter breast:
Thus was born such holy trust within her
That the graves of all who had been dear,
To a region clearer and serener,

Raised her spirit from our chilly sphere.

They were footsteps on her Jacob's ladder;
Angels to her were the loves and hopes
Which had left her purified, but sadder;
And they lured her to the emerald slopes

MOTHER MARGERY.

Of that Heaven where anguish never flashes
Her red fire-whips-happy land, where flowers
Blossom over the volcanic ashes

Of this blighting, blighted world of ours!

All her power was a love of goodness;
All her wisdom was a mystic faith
That the rough world's jargoning and rudeness
Turn to music at the gate of Death.

So she walked, while feeble limbs allowed her,
Knowing well that any stubborn grief

She might meet with could no more than crowd her
To that wall whose opening was relief.

So she lived, an anchoress of sorrow,
Lone and peaceful, on the rocky slope;
And, when burning trials came, would borrow
New fire of them for the lamp of hope.
When at last her palsied hand, in groping,
Rattled tremulous at the grated tomb,

Heaven flashed round her joys beyond her hoping,

And her young soul gladdened into bloom.

GEORGE S. Burleigh.

THE WIDOW AND CHILD.

HOME they brought her warrior dead;
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry.
All her maidens, watching, said

"She must weep, or she will die!"

Then they praised him, soft and low;
Called him worthy to be loved:
Truest friend and noblest foe!

Yet she neither spake nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took a face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

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;
For, truth to say, he found himself but melancholy companie.
But that which he would ne'er have guessed before him now most
plainly came:

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

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 died."

The man stopped short; and then went on" It is, you know, a

common story:

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.

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