Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,

And your purple shows your path;

But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath!"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861]

LUCY GRAY

OR SOLITUDE

OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see, at break of day,
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night,-
You to the town must go;

And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father, will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon,-
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a fagot-brand.
He plied his work; and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Lucy Gray

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down:
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

At daybreak on the hill they stood

That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

A furlong from their door.

They wept, and, turning homeward, cried,

"In heaven we all shall meet;

When in the snow the mother spied

The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small:
And through the broken hawthorn-hedge,
And by the low stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed-
The marks were still the same-
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank;

And further there were none!

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-Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind;

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.

William Wordsworth [1770-1850)

ALICE FELL

OR POVERTY

THE post-boy drove with fierce career,

For threatening clouds the moon had drowned; When, as we hurried on, my ear

Was smitten with a startling sound.

As if the wind blew many ways,

I heard the sound,-and more and more;
It seemed to follow with the chaise,
And still I heard it as before.

At length I to the boy called out;
He stopped his horses at the word,
But neither cry, nor voice, nor shout,
Nor aught else like it, could be heard.

The boy then smacked his whip, and fast
The horses scampered through the rain

But, hearing soon upon the blast

The cry, I bade him halt again.

Forthwith alighting on the ground,

"Whence comes," said I, "this piteous moan?"

And there a little Girl I found,

Sitting behind the chaise, alone.

Alice Fell

"My cloak!" no other word she spake, But loud and bitterly she wept,

As if her innocent heart would break:

And down from off her seat she leapt.

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"What ails you, child?" She sobbed, "Look here!" I saw it in the wheel entangled,

A weather-beaten rag as e'er

From any garden scarecrow dangled.

There, twisted between nave and spoke,
It hung, nor could at once be freed;
But our joint pains unloosed the cloak,
A miserable rag indeed!

"And whither are you going, child,

To-night along these lonesome ways?" "To Durham," answered she, half wild"Then come with me into the chaise."

Insensible to all relief,

Sat the poor girl, and forth did send Sob after sob, as if her grief

Could never, never have an end.

"My child, in Durham do you dwell?"
She checked herself in her distress,
And said, "My name is Alice Fell;
I'm fatherless and motherless.

"And I to Durham, Sir, belong."

Again, as if the thought would choke Her very heart, her grief grew strong; And all was for her tattered cloak!

The chaise drove on; our journey's end
Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
As if she had lost her only friend,
She wept, nor would be pacified.

Up to the tavern-door we post;
Of Alice and her grief I told,
And I gave money to the host,
To buy a new cloak for the old.

"And let it be of duffil gray,

As warm a cloak as man can sell!"
Proud creature was she the next day,
The little orphan, Alice Fell!

William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

EMMIE

OUR doctor had called in another, I never had seen him before,

But he sent a chill to my heart when I saw him come in at

the door,

Fresh from the surgery-schools of France and of other lands

Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merciless hands! Wonderful cures he had done, O yes, but they said too of him He was happier using the knife than in trying to save the

limb,

And that I can well believe, for he looked so coarse and so

red,

I could think he was one of those who would break their

jests on the dead,

And mangle the living dog that had loved him and fawned at his knee

Drenched with the hellish oorali-that ever such things should be!

IIere was a boy-I am sure that some of our children would die

But for the voice of love, and the smile, and the comforting

eye

Here was a boy in the ward, every bone seemed out of its

place

Caught in a mill and crushed--it was all but a hopeless case: