Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/131

 THE ARK AND DOVE.

��" TELL me a story please," my little girl Lisped from her cradle. So I bent me down, And told her how it rained, and rained, and rained, Till all the flowers were covered, and the trees Hid their tall heads, and where the houses stood, And people dwelt, a fearful deluge rolled ; Because the world was wicked, and refused To heed the works of God. But one good man, Who long had warned the wicked to repent, Obey, and live, taught by the voice of Heaven, Had built an ark ; and thither, with his wife And children, turned for safety. Two and two Of beasts and birds, and creeping things, he took, With food for all ; and when the tempest roared, And the great fountains of the sky poured out A ceaseless flood, till all beside were drowned, They in their quiet vessel dwelt secui'e. And so the mighty waters bare them up, And o'er the bosom of the deep they sailed For many days. But then a gentle dove 'Scaped from the casement of the ark, and spread Her lonely pinion o'er that boundless wave, i 2

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