This book is all that ’s left me now,—
Tears will unbidden start,—
With faltering lip and throbbing brow
I press it to my heart.
For many generations past
Here is our family tree;
My mother’s hands this Bible clasped,
She, dying, gave it me.
Ah! well do I remember those
Whose names these records bear;
...
An’ O! may I never live single again,
I wish I may never live single again;
I hae a gudeman, an’ a hame o’ my ain,
An’ O! may I never live single again.
I ’ve twa bonnie bairnies, the fairest of a’,
They cheer up my heart when their daddie’s awa’;
I ’ve one at my foot, and I ’ve one at my knee;
An’ fondly they look, an’ say “Mammie” to me...
I Rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow.
And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep,
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
But the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift...
The Irish Famine
GIVE me three grains of corn, mother,—
Only three grains of corn;
It will keep the little life I have
Till the coming of the morn.
I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,—
Dying of hunger and cold;
And half the agony of such a death
My lips have never told.
It has gnawed like a wolf, at my heart,...
Turin,—After News from Gaëta, 1861
Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaëta.
DEAD! one of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
On Seeing a Storm-Petrel in a Cage on a Cottage Wall and Releasing It
GAZE not at me, my poor unhappy bird;
That sorrow is more than human in thine eye;
Too deep already is my spirit stirred
To see thee here, child of the sea and sky,
Cooped in a cage with food thou canst not eat,
Thy “snow-flake” soiled, and soiled those conquering feet...
Our Father Land! and wouldst thou know
Why we should call it Father Land?
It is that Adam here below
Was made of earth by Nature’s hand;
And he our father, made of earth,
Hath peopled earth on every hand;
And we, in memory of his birth,
Do call our country Father Land.
At first, in Eden’s bowers, they say,
No...
The flowers of romance that I cherished,
Around me lie withered and dead;
The stars of my youth's shining heaven,
Were but meteors whose brightness misled;
...
If Nature smiles — the Mother must
I'm sure, at many a whim
Of Her eccentric Family —
Is She so much to blame?
