ANDANTE MODERATO.

THE ORPHAN BALLAD SINGERS,

THE MUSIC BY

HENRY RUSSELL,

BY WHOM, WITH PERMISSION, THIS BALLAD IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO

MRS. EDWARD LYTTON BULWER.

THE ORPHAN BALLAD SINGERS.

Он, weary, weary are our feet,

And weary, weary is our way;

Thro' many a long and crowded street
We've wandered mournfully to-day.
My little sister she is pale

She is too tender and too young

To bear the autumn's sullen gale,

And all day long the child has sung.

She was our mother's favourite child,
Who loved her for her eyes of blue,

And she is delicate and mild,

She cannot do what I can do. She never met her father's eyes,

Although they were so like her own;

In some far distant sea he lies,

A father to his child unknown.

The first time that she lisped his name,
A little playful thing was she;

How proud we were,-yet that night came

The tale how he had sunk at sea.

My mother never raised her head;

How strange, how white, how cold she grew!

It was a broken heart they said

I wish our hearts were broken too.

We have no home-we have no friends,
They said our home no more was ours;
Our cottage where the ash-tree bends,

The garden we had filled with flowers.
The sounding shells our father brought,
That we might hear the sea at home;
Our bees, that in the summer wrought
The winter's golden honeycomb.

We wandered forth mid wind and rain,
No shelter from the open sky;

I only wish to see again

My mother's grave, and rest and die. Alas, it is a weary thing

To sing our ballads o'er and o'er; The songs we used at home to singAlas, we have a home no more!

ST. MAWGAN CHURCH & LANHERN NUNNERY, CORNWALL.

THE old Mansion of Lanhern belonged to the Lords Arundell, of Wardour. It was given in 1794 by Henry Eighth, Lord Arundell, as an asylum for a convent of English Theresian nuns, who had migrated from Antwerp, in consequence of the invasion of the French. The sisterhood, or rather their successors, still continue secluded in the old and lonely house now called the Lanhern Nunnery.

IT stands amid the sheltering boughs,
A place of peace-a place of rest,
Where the veiled virgin's hourly vows
By prayer and penitence are blest.
The sunshine rests upon the walls

More golden than the common day,
And there a stiller shadow falls

Than rests on life's tumultuous way.

Alas! why should this quiet place
Bring fancies of unrest to me;
Why looks forth that beloved face
I seem in every place to see?
Ah, what may not those walls conceal!
The sunshine of that sainted shrine
Might from its inmost depths reveal
Some spirit passionate as mine;

Some one condemned in youth to part
From all that made her youth so dear,

To listen to her beating heart,

In shame-in solitude and fear :
To know no hope before the grave,
To fear there is no hope beyond,
Yet scarcely dare of heaven to crave
Forgiveness for a faith too fond:

To feel the white and vestal veil
Grow wet and warm with worldly tears,
To pass the midnight watching pale,
Yet tremble when the day appears:
Prostrate before the Cross to kneel,

With eyes that may not look above;

How dare the dedicate to feel

The agony of earthly love?