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; The wormwood added to the gall, GRAY. Is no strange thing, but, strange to say! The tale, the truth of every day. At Mary's birth, her mother smiled And, at the sight of that young flower, 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, The mourner cried, and while he spake, His breaking heart forbore to break; 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, 66 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 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, 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, Then rush'd the tears to her relief; A bow was in the cloud of grief. |