From The Gospel Advocate and Impartial Investigator, 28th October 1828, Page 352, Auburn, New York: Editor - L.S. Everett, Publisher - U.F. Doubleday.
Poetick Department
From "A New Year's Gift."
THE RUINED COTTAGE.
Oh there is
A deep, sweet feeling in the human heart,
Which makes life beautiful amid its thorns!
None will dwell in that cottage, for they say
Oppression reft it from the honest man,
And a curse clings to it: hence the vine
Trails its green weight of leaves upon the ground;
Hence weeds are in that garden: hence the hedge,
Once sweet with honeysuckle, is half dead:
And hence the grey moss on the apple tree.
One once dwelt there, who had been in his youth
A soldier; and when many years had past,
He sought his native village, and sat down
To end his days in peace. He had one child—
A little laughing thing, whose large dark eyes,
He said, were like the mother's she had left
Buried in stranger lands; and time went on
In comfort and content—and that fair girl
Had grown far taller than the red rose tree
Her father planted her first English birth-day.
And he had trained it up against an ash
Till it became his pride;—it was so rich
In blossom and in beauty, it was called
The tree of Isabel. 'Twas an appeal
To all the better feelings of the heart,
To mark their quiet happiness, their home— [1]
Their garden filled with fruits, and herbs, and flowers.
- ↑ a section of the original poem is here omitted, as follows:
In truth a home of love; and more than all,
To see them on the Sabbath, when they came
Among the first to church, and Isabel,
With her bright colour and her clear glad eyes
Bowed down so meekly in the house of prayer;
And in the hymn her sweet voice audible:
Her father looked so fond on her, and then
From her looked up so thankfully to Heaven!
And their cottage was so very neat;
