THE BEGGAR'S PETITION.

Oh! take me to your hospitable dome;

Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold! Short is my passage to the friendly tomb,

For I am poor, and miserably old.

Should I reveal the sources of my grief,

If soft humanity e'er touched your breast, Your hands would not withhold the kind relief, And tears of pity would not be repressed.

209

Heaven sends misfortunes-why should we repine?
"Tis heaven has brought me to the state you see;
And your condition may be soon like mine,—
The child of sorrow and of misery.

A little farm was my paternal lot,

Then like the lark I sprightly hailed the morn;
But ah! oppression forced me from my cot;
My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man !

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,

Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;

Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

MOSS.

THE WILD VIOLET.

Violet, violet, sparkling with dew,

Down in the meadow-land wild, where you grew,
How did you come by the beautiful blue

With which your soft petals unfold?

And how do you hold up your tender, young head, When rude, sweeping winds, rush along o'er your bed, And dark, gloomy clouds, ranging over you, shed Their waters so heavy and cold?

No one has nursed you, or watched you an hour,
Or found you a place in the garden or bower,
And they cannot yield me so lovely a flower,
As here I have found at my feet!

Speak, my sweet violet, answer and tell,

How you have grown up, and flourished so well,
And look so contented when lonely you dwell,
And we thus by accident meet?

"The same careful Hand," the violet said,
"That holds up the firmament, holds up my head;
And He who with azure the skies overspread,
Has painted the violets blue.

He sprinkled the stars out above me by night,
And sends down the sunbeams at morning, with light
To make my new coronet, sparkling and bright,
When formed of a drop of his dew.

KITTEN GOSSIP.

211

"I've nought to fear from the black, heavy cloud, Or the breath of the tempest that comes strong and loud,

When born in the lowland, and far from the crowd,

I know and I live but for One.

He soon forms a mantle, about me to cast,

Of long, silken grass, till the rain and the blast, And all that seemed threatening, have harmless by passed,

As the clouds scud before the warm sun.'

MISS H. F. GOULD.

KITTEN GOSSIP.

BY T. WESTWOOD.

KITTEN, Kitten, two months old,
Wooley snow-ball, lying snug,
Curled up in the warmest fold
Of the warm hearth-rug;
Turn your drowsy head this way⚫
What is life? Oh! Kitten, say.

Life? said the kitten, winking her eyes,
And twitching her tail in a droll surprise:
Life Oh! it's racing over the floor,
Out at the window and in at the door,