The fair girl looked into my face,
With her dark and serious eye;
Silently a while she looked,
Then heaved a quiet sigh;
And, with a half-reluctant will,
Again she made reply:

"Three years ago, unknown to us,
When nuts were on the tree,
Even in the pleasant harvest-time,
My brother went to sea—
Unknown to us to sea he went
And a woful house were we.

"That winter was a weary time,
A long dark time of woe;

For we knew not in what ship he sailed,
And vainly sought to know;

And day and night the loud wild winds
Seemed evermore to blow.

"My mother lay upon her bed,

Her spirit sorely tossed

With dismal thoughts of storm and wreck

Upon some savage coast;

But morn and eve we prayed to Heaven

That he might not be lost.

"And when the pleasant spring came on,

And fields again were green,

He sent a letter full of news,
Of the wonders he had seen;
Praying us to think him dutiful
As he afore had been.

"The tidings that came next were from

A sailor old and gray,

Who saw his ship at anchor lie

In the harbour at Bombay;

But he said my brother pined for home,
And wished he were away.

"Again he wrote a letter long,
Without a word of gloom;

And soon, and very soon, he said,
He should again come home.
I watched, as now, beside the door,
And yet he did not come.

"I watched and watched, but I knew not then

It would be all in vain ;

For very sick he lay the while,
In an hospital in Spain.
Ah me! I fear my brother dear
Will ne'er come home again.

"And now I watch-for we have heard

That he is on his way,

And the letter said, in very truth,

He would be here to-day.

Oh! there's no bird that singeth now

Could tempt me hence away?"

That self-same eve I wandered down
Unto the busy strand,

Just as a little boat came in,

With people to the land;
And 'mongst them was a sailor-boy
Who leaped upon the sand.

I knew him by his dark-blue eyes,
And by his features fair;
And as he leaped ashore, he sang
A simple Scottish air-

"There's nae place like our ain dear hame

To be met wi' onywhere!"

Mary Howitt.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

THY neighbour? It is he whom thou
Hast power to aid and bless,

Whose aching heart and burning brow
Thy soothing hand may press.

Thy neighbour? 'Tis the fainting poor,
Whose eye with want is dim,

Whom hunger sends from door to door-
Go thou and succour him.

Thy neighbour? "Tis that weary man,
Whose years are at their brim,
Bent low with sickness, cares, and pain-
Go thou and comfort him.

Whene'er thou meet'st a human form
Less favoured than thine own,
Remember 'tis thy neighbour worm,
Thy brother or thy son.

Oh, pass not, pass not heedless by;
Perhaps thou canst redeem
The breaking heart from misery—
Go, share thy lot with him.

LUCY GRAY; OR, SOLITUDE.

OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray;
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day,
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade, Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,

-The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night-
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, child, to light
Your mother through the snow.'

“That, father, will I gladly do!
"Tis scarcely afternoon-

The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon."

At this the father raised his hook
And snapped a fagot band;

He plied his work;-and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe;
With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:

She wandered up and down:

And many a hill did Lucy climb;

But never reached the town.

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 a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from the door.

And, turning homeward, now they cried, "In heaven we all shall meet!"

-When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downward 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
The 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.

Wordsworth,