The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
At daybreak on the hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.
They wept—and, turning homeward, cried,
"In heaven we all shall meet;"—
When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.
Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn-hedge,
And by the long stone-wall.
And then an open field they crossed,
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost,
And to the bridge they came.
They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank:
And further there were none!
—Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child,
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
POOR SUSAN.
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
There's a thrush that sings loud,—it has sung for three years;
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the bird.