LE PETIT SAVOYARD.
(FROM THE FRENCH OF GUIRAUD.)
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BY WILLIAM DOWE.
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Well, go to France, poor little child! yes, go.
My love for thee is worthless: I am poor.
People enjoy elsewhere; here we endure:
Go child, ’tis for your good; ’tis better so.
When this poor arm was strong to labor once,
Refreshed, rewarded when my darling smiled,
Who then had dared advise me to renounce
The dear caresses of my child?
But I am widowed; Strength departs with Joy.
Now sick and sad, I know not what to do.
’Tis vain to beg; our friends are paupers too.
Leave thy lorn mother; leave this poor Savoy;
Go where God takes thee—go, my cherished boy!
Still, far away, think on this homestead lone;
Remember it; and this last hour, and this;
A mother blesses her beloved one
With her embrace; my blessing with my kiss!
Now, do you see yon oak? I think I may
Go so far with thee; four long years are o’er
Since with your father, when he went away,
I walked there too; but he returned no more.
Were he but here to guide thee forth, ’twould be
Less sorrow to my heart to bid thee go.
Thou art not ten years old; so helpless—oh!
How I shall pray to God, my child, for thee!
Unless He aid, how can thy small feet tread
Through a cold world, without a mother’s care?
She would, at least, instruct thee how to bear;
Poor little child! O, why have I no bread?
But ’tis God’s will, and we must humbly bow;
Don’t weep to leave me, little hapless thing!
Take to their palace-gates a cheerful brow,
’Twill grieve thee, oft, to think of me, I know;
But to amuse the rest, thou still must sing.
Sing, ere life’s bitterness for thee shall come.
Now take thy wallet and that poor marmotte;
Beguile the way with my old songs of home,
Sung to thy cradle in this mountain cot.
If I had strength, as in the time gone by,
I’d hold thee by the hand and lead thee on;
But I should fail, before three days were done;
Yes, thou shouldst leave me soon behind, and I—
Where I was born, my son, I wish to die.
Hear thy poor mother’s last advice, and take
The warning, if thou wouldst be blest of Heaven;
The poor man’s only wealth is what is given.
Ask of the rich; he gives for Jesu’s sake.
Thy father said so too;
Be thou more fortunate, my boy; adieu!
The sun had fallen beneath the neighboring steep,
And “we must part,” the mother said at last—
On through the oaks the little wanderer passed,
Turning, at times; but did not dare to weep.
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[To the above I have presumed to make a pendant.]
THE DYING SAVOYARD.
Cold, cold is the storm, with its darkness and danger!
Take pity, dear friends, on a poor little stranger:
To-night is a feast in your village, I’m told,
While shuddering and foodless I sob in the cold.
You all are in gladness; but I am in sorrow,
And must rest on the ground, to be dead on to-morrow.
Oh! dreary to die with my home at a distance,
And all those I love too far off for assistance;
Around me the snow-flakes are falling and flying,
And the sad light of evening is darkening and dying;
The winds freeze my blood as they mournfully sweep,
And icicles hang on my rags as I weep.
Ah, pity my poverty, pity my years,
And pass not a child, in his hunger and tears;
And see, the companion and friend of my lot,
As forlorn as myself, my poor, pining marmotte;
He is shivering and hungry, and nestling in quest
Of the warmth that is nearly gone out of my breast.
O, never again shall a wandering boy
See the dear cottage homes and the skies of Savoy,
Or hear the gay herd-song, the falling of rills
In the fresh-swelling air of her beautiful hills;
Oh, where are they now, those old mornings of joy?
They are lost, they are lost, to the wandering boy!
Oh, never again shall my fond mother kiss me;
How dearly she loved me—how much will she miss me!
And how must she mourn, my affectionate mother,
For her lost little child, and she has not another!
Long, long may she weep at the door of her cot,
Ere she sees me return with my merry marmotte.
So the Savoyard mourned, the poor child, in his sorrow,
Undoomed to go forth at the voice of the morrow,
With his friend, the marmotte, he had died ere the day;
And they scooped them one grave in the snow where they lay;
And a slight cross of lath rises over the spot
Where the Savoyard sleeps with his mountain marmotte.
MABEL DACRE:
OR THE TRIAL OF FAITH.
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BY HELEN.
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