Stood that old widow woman with the rest, It toiled upon the waters, and the oars Were dipped in slowly. As it neared the beach, A moaning sound came from it, and a groan Burst from the lips of all the anxious there, When they looked on each ghastly countenance, For that lone boat was filled with wounded men, Bearing them to the hospital-and then That aged woman saw her son. She prayed, And gained her prayer, that she might be his nurse, It soothed him so to hear his mother's voice, (Hers was not grief that words had comfort for) Towards the shadowy lane, then turned again, Her help, her hope, her child, lay dead together She went home to her lonely room. Some entered it, and there she sat, Next morn Her white hair hanging o'er the withered hands With two or three large tears, which had dried in. Her little savings, and she had no friends: But strangers made her grave in that church-yard, Miss L. E. Landon. MUSIC. It comes-it comes upon the gale, With early feelings down life's vale, Oh! on this far and foreign shore, How doubly blest that song appears; Long days and distance wafting o'er The sweetness of departed years. The scene around me fades away, The summer bower, the silent stream, The scenes of youth, are on the strain; And peopled in my waking dream With forms I ne'er shall see again. As on my wanderings when a child, Along the dim and distant wild, And wafts my spirit far away. And on the heart as it distils, Dear as the dew drop to the leaf, Oh how the rising bosom thrills So sweet so hallowed 'tis to feel The gentle woe that wakes thy sigh, But hark! that soothing strain is o'er, So fades from off our native shore, The accents of a friend's farewell. John Malcolm, Esq. CHARACTER OF WOMAN. Through many a land and clime a ranger, A lonely unprotected stranger, To all the stranger's ills a prey. While steering thus my course precarious, Alive to every tender feeling, To deeds of mercy ever prone; The wounds of pain and sorrow healing No proud delay, no dark suspicion, Formed in benevolence of nature, When parched with thirst, with hunger wasted, Her courteous looks, her words caressing, Woman's the stranger's general blessing, From sultry India to the Pole! Barbauld. |