Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/50



Is covered with a thousand English graves, By whose side none remain to weep or pray. Alas! we do mistake, and vainly buy Our golden idols at too great a price. I'd rather share the lowest destiny, That dares not look beyond the present day, But treads on native ground, breathes native air, Than win the wealth of worlds beyond the waves, And pine and perish 'neath a foreign sky."

Another poem in the same spirit, yet even more touching in its associations, is "The Factory." We cannot refrain from giving one or two verses:—

We read of Moloch's sacrifice, We sicken at the name, And seem to hear the infant cries,— And yet we do the same;

Yea, worse,—’twas but a moment's pain The heathen altar gave; But we give years—our idol, Gain, Demands a living grave.

How precious is the little one Before his mother's sight, With bright hair dancing in the sun, And eyes of azure light.



And such should childhood ever be, The fairy well; to bring To life's worn, weary memory The freshness of its spring.

But here the order is reversed, And infancy, like age, Knows of existence but its worst, One dull and darkened page;

Written with tears and stamped with toil, Crushed from the earliest hour, Weeds darkling on the bitter soil That never knew a flower.