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To-morrow she will be gone :
Other mothers may keep
Their babes awake and asleep,
But I must not keep her here."
Whether I know or guess,

I know this not the less.

So I was sent away

That none might spy the truth :

And my childhood waxed to youth
And I left off childish play.

I never cared to play

With the village boys and girls ; And I think they thought me proud, I found so little to say

And kept so from the crowd:

But I had the longest curls,

And I had the largest eyes,

And my teeth were small like pearls ;
The girls might flout and scout me,
But the boys would hang about me
In sheepish mooning wise.

Our one-street village stood
A long mile from the town,
A mile of windy down
And bleak one-sided wood,
With not a single house.
Our town itself was small,
With just the common shops,
And throve in its small way.

A CHILL.

WHAT can lambkins do
HAT

W All the keen night through?

Nestle by their woolly mother,

The careful ewe.

What can nestlings do

In the nightly dew?

Sleep beneath their mother's wing

Till day breaks anew.

If in field or tree

There might only be

Such a warm soft sleeping-place

Found for me!

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Our neighboring gentry reared
The good old-fashioned crops,
And made old-fashioned boasts
Of what John Bull would do
If Frenchman Frog appeared,
And drank old-fashioned toasts,
And made old-fashioned bows
To my Lady at the Hall.

My Lady at the Hall
Is grander than they all
Hers is the oldest name
In all the neighborhood;
But the race must die with her
Though she's a lofty dame,
For she 's unmarried still.
Poor people say she's good
And has an open hand
As any in the land,

And she's the comforter
Of many sick and sad ;

My nurse once said to me

That everything she had

Came of my Lady's bounty:

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Though she's greatest in the county

She's humble to the poor,

No beggar seeks her door
But finds help presently.
I pray both night and day
For her, and you must pray :

But she 'll never feel distress
If needy folk can bless."
I was a little maid

When here we came to live
From somewhere by the sea.
Men spoke a foreign tongue
There where we used to be
When I was merry and young,
Too young to feel afraid;
The fisher-folk would give
A kind strange word to me,
There by the foreign sea :
I don't know where it was,
But I remember still

Our cottage on a hill,
And fields of flowering grass
On that fair foreign shore.

I liked my old home best,
But this was pleasant too :
So here we made our nest
And here I grew.

And now and then my Lady
In riding past our door

Would nod to nurse and speak,
Or stoop and pat my cheek;
And I was always ready
To hold the field-gate wide
For my Lady to go through;
My Lady in her veil

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