A friendless, famished factory child,
Morn, noon, and night, I toiled and toiled
Yet was I happy then;

"My heart was pure, my cheek was fair, Ah, would to God a cancer there

Had eaten out its way!

For soon my tasker, dreaded man,
With treacherous wiles and art began
To mark me for his prey.

"And month by month he vainly strove To light the flame of lawless love

In my most loathing breast; Oh, how I feared and hated him, So basely kind, so smoothly grim, My terror and my pest!

"Till one day at that prison-mill, --

"Thenceforward drooped my stricken head; I lived, — I died, a life of dread,

Lest they should guess my shame; But weeks and months would pass away, And all to soon the bitter day

Of wrath and ruin came;

"I could not hide my altered form;
Then on my head the fearful storm
Of jibe and insult burst:

Men only mocked me for my fate,
But woman's scorn and woman's hate
Me, their poor sister, curst.

"O woman, had thy kindless face But gentler looked on my disgrace,

And healed the wounds it gave!

I was a drowning, sinking wretch,
Whom no one loved enough to stretch
A finger out to save.

"They tore my baby from my heart,
And locked it in some hole apart,
Where I could hear it cry,

Such was the horrid poor-house law;-
Its little throes I never saw,

Although I heard it die!

"Still the stone hearts that ruled the place
Let me not kiss my darling's face,
My little darling dead;

OI was mad with rage and hate,
And yet all sullenly I sate,

And not a word I said.

THE AFRICAN DESERT.

SYNOPSIS.

By contemplating a guilty death-bed, the mind is brought to that state in which it best picture the desolation of nature The Desert. - Allusion to the fable of the cranes and pigmies. The contrast afforded by surrounding countries. — The warni present God Man regarded as an intruder on the wastes of nature. — Exemplified by the journey and fate of a caravan crossing the desert. - In detau. — An Aincaa sunrise. Approach of the caravan. - Solitude. The father and child. - - MirageThe well in sight. The Simoom. The stillness that succeeds.

Go, child of pity; watch the sullen glare
That lights the haggard features of despair,
As upon dying guilt's distracted sight
Rise the black clouds of everlasting night;
Drink in the fevered eye-ball's dismal ray,
And gaze again, — and turn not yet away,
Drink in its anguish, till thy heart and eye
Reel with the draught of that sad lethargy;
Till gloom with chilling fears thy soul congeal
And on thy bosom stamp her leaden seal;
Till Melancholy flaps her heavy wings
Above thy fancy's light imaginings,

And Sorrow wraps thee in her sable shroud
And Terror in a gathering thunder-cloud!

Go, call up Darkness from his dread abode,
Bid Desolation fling her curse abroad,

- Then gaze around on nature! Ah, how dear,
How widow-like she sits in sadness here:
Lost are the glowing tints, the softening shades,
Her sunny meadows, and her greenwood glades;
No grateful flower hath gemmed its mother-earth,
Rejoicing in the blessedness of birth;
No blithesome lark has waked the drowsy day,
No sorrowing dews have wept themselves away,
Faded, the smiles that dimpled in her vales;
Scattered, the fragrance of the spicy gales