Love ruled on high! Below, the twain that share
Men's builded empires - Mammon and Despair!

At length, with pitying eye and soothing tone,
The stranger spoke: "Thy bitterer grief mine own;
Mine the full coffers, but the beggared heart,
Amidst the million, lonely as thou art.

But Gold-earth's demon, when unshared - receives
God's breath, and grows a God, when it relieves.
Thou trust'st our common Father, orphan one,
And He shall guide thee, if thou trust the son.
Nay, follow, child." And on, with passive feet,
Ghost-like, she followed through the death-like street.
They paused at last a stately pile before;

The drowsy porter oped the noiseless door;

The girl stood wistful still without;

the pause

The guide divined, and thus rebuked the cause: 'Enter, no tempter let thy penury fear,

We have a sister, and her home is here."

II.

And who the wanderer that hath shelter won

Beneath the roof of Fortune's favoured son?

Ill stars predoomed her, and she stole to birth
Fresh from the Heaven, Law's outcast on the earth.
The child of Love, betraying and betrayed,
The blossom opened in the Upas shade; -
So ran the rumour; if the rumour lied,
The humble mother wept, but not denied:
Ne'er had the infant's slumber known a rest
On childhood's native shield

a father's breast.

Dead or neglectful, 't was to her the same:
But oh how dear yea, dearer for the shame,
All that God hallows in a mother's name!
Here, one proud refuge from a world's disdain,
Here, the lost empress half resumes her reign;
Here the deep-fallen Eve sees Eden's skies
Smile on the desert from the cherub's eyes.
Sweet to each human heart the right to love;
But 't is the deluge consecrates the dove;
And haply scorn yet more the child endears,
Cradled in misery, and baptized with tears.

Each then the all on earth unto the other,

The smiling infant and the erring mother:

The one soon lost the smile which childhood wears,
Chill'd by the gloom it marvels at
but shares;
The other, by that purest love made pure,
Learn'd to redeem, by labouring to endure:
Patience in penance, more than pain for deeds,
Draws the hiv'd music from the bruisèd reeds.

Hard was their life, and lonely was their hearth;
There, kindness brought no holiday of mirth;
No kindred visited, no playmate came;

Joy - the proud worldling-shunned the child of shame! Yet in the lesson which, at stolen whiles,

'Twixt care and care, the respite-hour beguiles,

The mother's mind the polished trace betrays

Of early culture and serener days;

And gentle birth still moulds the delicate phrase.

By converse, more than books, (for books too poor,) Learn'd Lucy more than books themselves ensure;

For if, in truth, the mother's heart had err'd,

Pure now the life, and holy was the word:

The fallen state no grovelling change had wrought;

Meek if the bearing, lofty was the thought;

So much of noble in the lore instill'd,

You felt the soul had ne'er the error will'd;
That fraud alone had duped its wings astray

From their true instincts to empyreal day.

Thus life itself, if sad'ning, still refined,

And through the heart the culture reach'd the mind.

As to the moon the tides attracted move,

So wakes the intellect beneath the love.
To nurse the sickness, to assuage the care,
To charm the sigh into the happier prayer;
Forestall the unuttered wish with ready guess;
Wise in the exquisite tact of tenderness;
These Lucy's study; and, in grateful looks,
Seraphs write lessons more divine than books.

So Lucy's April opened into May

Fair time, to Life frank Nature's holiday!

When, unto most, the imagined future seems

The ivory gate whence glide to shape the dreams; When Love first trembles on the prison-bar

Of clay; and Hope flies fearless to the far

Blest time, to most the ideal heaven of man

With her the Golden ceased, the Iron Age began.

Behold her by the couch, on bended knees!
There the wan mother-there the last disease!
Dread to the poor the least suspense of health,
Their hands their friends,

their labour all their wealth:

Let the wheel rest from toil a single sun,
And all the humble clock-work is undone.
The custom lost, the drain upon the hoard,

The debt that sweeps the fragment from the board,
How mark the hunger round thee, and be brave -

Foresee thy orphan, and not fear the grave?
Lower and ever lower in the grade

Of penury fell the, mother and the maid,

Till the grim close; when, as the midnight rain

Drove to the pallet through the broken pane,

The dying murmured: “Near,

thy hand,

-more near!

I am not what scorn deem'd, yet not severe

The doom which leaves me in the hour of death

The right to bless thee with my parting breath

These, worn till now, wear thou, his daughter. Live
To see thy Sire, and tell him

-I forgive!"

Cold the child thrills beneath the hands that press

Her bended neck-slow slackens the caress

Loud the roof rattles with the stormy gust;

The grief is silent, and the love is dust;

--