ALONE IN LONDON!
I found her crouching in the lonely street;
Scarce six years' old she was: Her little feet
Were worn with endless pacing, up and down,
And round and round the cruel thoughtless town.
Her limbs were shrunk, and in her large round eyes
The light of coming madness seemed to rise.
No word she spoke, but sat, a prey to scorn,
Forsaken, friendless, feeble and forlorn.
And, as I pondered on her sorry tale,
One weird, unearthly, melancholy wail,
Broke from her lips:—a cry of agony,
Of hopeless, mad, despairing misery:
Then grim starvation on her little head
Laid his cold fingers, and she fell back dead!
I raised her tenderly with pitying arms,
And in a garden, far from Life's alarms,
I buried her, and left her all alone,
And wrote this epitaph upon the stone:—
"Peace to her ashes, but not peace to those,
Her erewhile friends, the cause of all her woes,
Who fondled and caressed her for a space,
Who loved to stroke her soft, confiding face,
Who gave her food and shelter from her birth,
Who joined in all her harmless youthful mirth;
But, when they went for holidays to roam,
Shut-to the door of what had been her home,
And thoughtless left to die upon the mat,
Their faithful but forgotten Tabby-cat."
