AN EVERY-DAY TALE.

Written for a benevolent Society in the metropolis, the object of which is to relieve poor women during the first month of their widowhood, to preserve what little property they may have from wreck and ruin, in a season of embarrassment, when kindness and good counsel are especially needed; and, so far as may be practicable, to assist the destitute with future means of maintaining themselves and their fatherless children.

"The short and simple annals of the poor."

MINE is a tale of every day,

Yet turn not thou thine ear away;
For 't is the bitterest thought of all,

The wormwood added to the gall,
That such a wreck of mortal bliss,
That such a weight of woe as this,

GRAY.

Is no strange thing, but, strange to say! The tale, the truth of every day.

At Mary's birth, her mother smiled
Upon her first, last, only child,

And, at the sight of that young flower,
Forgot the anguish of her hour;

Her pains return'd;-she soon forgot

Love, joy, hope, sorrow, she was not.

Her partner stood, like one bereft

Of all;—not all, their babe was left;

By the dead mother's side it slept,
Slept sweetly;—when it woke, it wept.
"Live, Mary, live, and I will be
Father and mother both to thee!"

The mourner cried, and while he spake,

His breaking heart forbore to break;
Faith, courage, patience, from above,
Flew to the help of fainting love.

While o'er his charge that parent yearn'd,

All woman's tenderness he learn'd,

All woman's waking, sleeping care,

- That sleeps not to her babe,—her prayer, Of power to bring upon its head,

The richest blessings heaven can shed;

All these he learn'd, and lived to say,

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My strength was given me as my day.”

So the Red Indian of those woods,

That echo to Lake Erie's floods,

Reft of his consort in the wild,

Became the mother of his child!

Nature (herself a mother) saw

His grief, and loosed her kindliest law: Warm from its fount life's stream, propell'd,

His breasts with sweet nutrition swell'd,

At whose strange springs, his infant drew
Milk, as the rose-bud drinks the dew.

Mary from childhood rose to youth,

In paths of innocence and truth;

-Train'd by her parent, from her birth,

To go to heaven by way of earth,

She was to him, in after-life,

Both as a daughter and a wife.

Meekness, simplicity, and grace, Adorn'd her speech, her air, her face; The spirit, through its earthly mould, Broke, as the lily's leaves unfold;

Her beauty open'd on the sight,

As a star trembles into light.

Love found that maiden; love will find

Way to the coyest maiden's mind;

Love found and tried her many a year,
With hope deferr'd, and boding fear;
To the world's end her hero stray'd;
Tempests and calms his bark delay'd;

What then could her heart-sickness soothe ?

"The course of true love ne'er ran smooth!"

Her bosom ached with drear suspense,

Till sharper trouble drove it thence:

Affliction smote her father's brain,

And he became a child again.

Ah! then, the prayers, the pangs, the tears, He breathed, felt, shed on her young years, That duteous daughter well repaid,

Till in the grave she saw him laid,

Beneath her mother's church-yard stone:

There first she felt herself alone;

But while she gazed on that cold heap,
Her parents' bed, and could not weep,
A still small whisper seem'd to say,
"Strength shall be given thee as thy day:"

Then rush'd the tears to her relief;

A bow was in the cloud of grief.