rateful kisses,
Drew the loved one to his bosom:
And the babe that nestled near her
Covered he with warm caresses.
Reason, like a golden sunbeam
On a lily-cup, had lightened
Her sweet soul so dark and turbid--
For three years so darkly turbid;
Three long years so dark and turbid.
"Charles, my dream has been a sad one,"
Spake she, like expiring music,
Shadowed with a mournful sadness.
"I have dreamt they stole my baby,
Buried my dear, darling infant!"
Then she took the babe and kiss'd it,
Presst it to her snowy bosom;
And, with voice low, soft, and grateful,
Murmured, "Charles, I am _so_ happy!
Do not weep--I'm _very_ happy!"

VI.

Reader! 'tis no idle fiction:
Once a lovely, laughing maiden--
Lovely as a Summer morning,
Lived and loved, as I have told thee;
Lost her babe, as I have told thee;
And a mental night came o'er her
Like a ghastly, gaping fissure,
Like a chasm of empty darkness.
As a new-made grave in Summer
Bulges up dark and unsightly,
With the bright blue sky above it,
And the daisies smiling round it,
So, with all its doleful darkness,
Fell the dream of that fair suff'rer
O'er her mind with inward canker,
Like a slug upon the rose-leaf!
Then she woke, as I have told thee,
After three years' trance-like sleeping,
Knowing not she had been sleeping;
And for months she never doubted
That the child she loved and fondled
Was lier long-dead darling first-born!
Happy hearts all feared to tell her:
Death in Life again they dreaded.

Now no Death in Life they fear;
Blanche is happy all the year.

SONG OF THE STRIKE.

1874.

With features haggard and worn;
With a child in its coffin--dead;
With a wife and sons o'er a fireless hearth,
In a hovel with never a bed;
While the wind through lattice and door
Is driving the sleet and rain,
A workman strong, with sinews of steel,
Sits singing this dismal refrain:
Strike! Strike! Strike!
Let the bright wheels of Industry rust:
Let us earn in our shame
A pauper's name,
Or eat of a criminal crust.

Ah! What though the little ones die,
And women sink weary and weak;
And the paths of life, with suffering rife,
Be paved with the hearts that break?
While souls, famine-smitten and crusht,
Seek food in the skies away,
This workman strong, with s