With softest greenest moss I lined
For her a little nest;
No crushing marble slab I laid
Upon her tender breast.
Nor iron rails like prison-bars
Her sacred form enclose,
The sternest guardian of her grave
Is just a fragile rose.
A CHILD’S FAVOURITE
Only an old wooden dolly,
With an arm and a leg a-missing,
The point of her nose rubbed off, I suppose,
Through too much washing or kissing.
In a frock of faded satin,
With tinsel lace tarnished and tattered;
Her “coal-scuttle” bonnet holds, alas!
A head that’s a trifle battered.
Oh, no, she has not lost her locks,
She never had curls black or golden;
A doll’s wig was safely painted on
In the days that you call “olden.”
You laugh, and think her “too funny;”
Yet once she was just as much cherished
As your dolly is—by a wee girl
Whose dolly-days long ago perished.
RICH OR POOR?
Only a string of cold white pearls,
Or diamond drops, like frozen tears,
Has clasped my lady’s slender neck
Through all the barren empty years.
Only wee warm white baby arms
Have clasped my neck thro’ the sweet years;
Yet she is rich and I am poor—
Or so it to the world appears.