The American Library of Art, Literature and Song

STRANGER. What! has thy love, then, | Hapless, no Christian sigh, or sympathetic fled, or faithless proved?

DOVE. Ah, no! The sportsman murdered

him I loved.

tear,

Orphaned and outcast one, falls on thy ear; What! pray for blessings, O! ye undefiled, STRANGER. Unhappy one, beware! that Then shrink from and ne'er aid this suffering

sportsman's nigh.

child?

"How lives he?"-" Where?"-" Whence

gains his bread?"

Even none ask; each turns away the head.

Weak from exposure-" want of food,"

some say

O'ercome by fever, in the street, one day Reeling he fell; a boy, his only friend,

HELPLESS, as foam upon life's stormy Lifted the shattered frame-past healing art

sea,

to mend

At mercy of the strong, seems "poor human- Delirious, to the hospital conveyed;

ity."

Ragged and patched, the tattered shreds he

wore,

Plainly had served for others, long beforeEven refused to hide the poverty within, Revealed the wasted frame, disclosed the shrivelled skin.

There, dying, on the ward-bed he was laid, Rejected by the world, by charity (?) betrayed.

Earnest the many then in pitying grief; Alas! too late their tears: Death only gave relief.

The nurse, who watched the feeble breath depart,

For, since his birth, that pale and piteous Saw the once bright eyes dim, when stilled face, the restless heart,

On which gaunt hunger fed, hath borne the Turned from the dead, in sympathetic pain,

trace,

Rapacious want, "in sin," 'tis said, imbued,
Remorselessly affixes on her helpless brood;
Even the voice, now shrill, anon suppressed,
Speaks of disease that rankles in the breast:
'Tis but a street gamin, who, night or day,
Summer or winter drifts along the way.
Mark well the sunken eyes, the hunted stare;
Imprinted on the shrunken visage, there
The story of a youth, in language plain,
Hardened in misery's cruel school of pain.
Of all the many that may pass him by,
Not e'en Philanthropy his needs descry;

Heard in her mind his ravings o'er again; Each sentence vivid burned within her brain. "So cold the wind," he cried, "my aching bones

Turn into ice! How rough and sharp the stones!

Rest! Can I ever rest? My tired feet Ever trudges the same old round! Along

the street

Even the horse is fed, and dogs can eat!
The people do not care one bit for me!
Good God! why do I live? I wish that I
could see!

Shell and seaweed and sparkling stone
It flung on the golden sand;
Strange relics torn from its deepest caves,
Sad trophies of wild victorious waves,
It scattered upon the strand-

Spars that had looked so strong and true.
At many a gallant launch,

The seabird had flown to her wave-girdled Shattered and broken, flung to the shore,

nest,

And the fisherman sunk to his slumbers.

While the tide in its wild triumphant roar Rang a dirge for the vessel staunch;