Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

Cold, cold is the storm, with its darkness and danger!
Take pity, dear friends, on a poor little stranger:
To-night is a feast in your village, I’m told,
While shuddering and foodless I sob in the cold.
You all are in gladness; but I am in sorrow,
And must rest on the ground, to be dead on to-morrow.

Oh! dreary to die with my home at a distance,
And all those I love too far off for assistance;
Around me the snow-flakes are falling and flying,
And the sad light of evening is darkening and dying;
The winds freeze my blood as they mournfully sweep,
And icicles hang on my rags as I weep.

Ah, pity my poverty, pity my years,
And pass not a child, in his hunger and tears;
And see, the companion and friend of my lot,
As forlorn as myself, my poor, pining marmotte;
He is shivering and hungry, and nestling in quest
Of the warmth that is nearly gone out of my breast.

O, never again shall a wandering boy
See the dear cottage homes and the skies of Savoy,
Or hear the gay herd-song, the falling of rills
In the fresh-swelling air of her beautiful hills;
Oh, where are they now, those old mornings of joy?
They are lost, they are lost, to the wandering boy!

Oh, never again shall my fond mother kiss me;
How dearly she loved me—how much will she miss me!
And how must she mourn, my affectionate mother,
For her lost little child, and she has not another!
Long, long may she weep at the door of her cot,
Ere she sees me return with my merry marmotte.

So the Savoyard mourned, the poor child, in his sorrow,
Undoomed to go forth at the voice of the morrow,
With his friend, the marmotte, he had died ere the day;
And they scooped them one grave in the snow where they lay;
And a slight cross of lath rises over the spot
Where the Savoyard sleeps with his mountain marmotte.

* * * * *

=MABEL DACRE:=

=OR THE TRIAL OF FAITH.=

=BY HELEN.=