Thomas Ashe

“ See, she drops the flowers: she lifts a finger, and listens;
While the clock begins its sleepy tale in the steeple.
“ One: two: three”:—she counts: and up she springs, and is eager;
Gives the dog a hug, as if to rouse him to action.
“ Rolf, yes, that is ten: we must be there in a second.
“ Come, quick! do you hear?” She gives the flowers, in the ribbon
Of her neat straw hat,—the while she turns it, coquette-like,—
Just a glance, a touch, to have it all that is perfect:
'Neath pert little chin she ties the string like a woman:
Then they run, and gain the curate’s garden together. ”

“ Now she scarcely thinks if it be morning or even.
When, in France, so long, through bitter years of her trial,
All seem’d lost,—when, often, even craving of hunger
Gnaw’d her,—it was hard: there was a struggle within her:
Yet her heart bore up, and she was harden’d to bear it;
As one, wreck’d, swims on, and battles slow with the breakers. ”

“ While the mother smoothed the soft brown hair from the forehead.
“ See, mamma, what flowers!” she said, and show’d, in her basket.
Gems, the hill top loves: and Edith smiled, to behold them,
As one will, who finds some lost thing, wholly forgotten:—
“ Yellow mountain pansies! You have been to the beacon!
“ These I know so well! they only grow by the beacon. ”