Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading Part 15

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 long 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!

--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.

POOR SUSAN.

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, There's a thrush that sings loud,--it has sung for three years; Poor Susan has pa.s.sed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,-- The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colors all have all pa.s.sed away from her eyes.