“And still the coffins came,
  With their sorrowful trains and slow;
Coffin after coffin still,
  A sad and sickening show;
From grief exempt, I never had dreamt
  Of such a World of Woe!

“Of the hearts that daily break,
  Of the tears that hourly fall,
Of the many, many troubles of life,
  That grieve this earthly ball—­
Disease and Hunger, and Pain, and Want,
  But now I dreamt of them all!

“For the blind and the cripple were there,
  And the babe that pined for bread,
And the houseless man, and the widow poor
  Who begged—­to bury the dead;
The naked, alas, that I might have clad,
  The famish’d I might have fed!

“The sorrow I might have sooth’d,
  And the unregarded tears;
For many a thronging shape was there,
  From long-forgotten years,
Ay, even the poor rejected Moor,
  Who raised my childish fears!

“Each pleading look, that long ago
  I scann’d with a heedless eye,
Each face was gazing as plainly there,
  As when I pass’d it by: 
Woe, woe for me if the past should be
  Thus present when I die!

“No need of sulphurous lake,
  No need of fiery coal,
But only that crowd of human kind
  Who wanted pity and dole—­
In everlasting retrospect—­
  Will wring my sinful soul!

“Alas!  I have walk’d through life
  Too heedless where I trod;
Nay, helping to trample my fellow-worm,
  And fill the burial sod—­
Forgetting that even the sparrow falls
  Not unmark’d of God!

“I drank the richest draughts;
  And ate whatever is good—­
Fish, and flesh, and fowl, and fruit,
  Supplied my hungry mood;
But I never remember’d the wretched ones
  That starve for want of food!

“I dress’d as the noble dress,
  In cloth of silver and gold,
With silk, and satin, and costly furs,
  In many an ample fold;
But I never remember’d the naked limbs
  That froze with winter’s cold.

“The wounds I might have heal’d! 
  The human sorrow and smart! 
And yet it never was in my soul
  To play so ill a part: 
But evil is wrought by want of Thought,
  As well as want of Heart!”

She clasp’d her fervent hands,
  And the tears began to stream;
Large, and bitter, and fast they fell,
  Remorse was so extreme;
And yet, oh yet, that many a Dame
  Would dream the Lady’s Dream!

THE KEY.

A MOORISH ROMANCE.

“On the east coast, towards Tunis, the Moors still preserve the key of their ancestors’ houses in Spain; to which country they still express the hopes of one day returning and again planting the crescent on the ancient walls of the Alhambra.”—­SCOTT’S Travels in Morocco and Algiers.

“Is Spain cloven in such a manner as to want
closing?”
SANCHO PANZA.