Scant the furniture about him, but bright flowers were in the room,
Crimson phloxes, waxen lilies, roses laden with perfume.
On a table by the bedside, open at a well-worn page,
Where the mother had been reading, lay a Bible stained by age.
Now he could not hear the verses; he was flighty, and she wept
With her arms around her youngest, who close to her side had crept.
Blacking boots and selling papers, in all weathers day by day,
Brought upon poor Jim consumption, which was eating life away.
And this cry came with his anguish for each breath a struggle cost,
“’Ere’s the morning Sun and ’Erald—latest news of steamship lost.