With the horrors of his state,
And with anguish desperate,
Then poor Harry owned too late,
He was _sick of gunning_!
While his mother bent to mourn
As her froward son was borne,
With his hand all burnt and torn,
Faint and pale, before her,
Harry's pain must be endured,--
And the wound--it might be cured;
But, for fingers uninsured,
There was no restorer!
=The Pebble and the Acorn=
"I am a Pebble! I yield to none!"
Were the swelling words of a tiny stone,
"Nor time nor season can alter me;
I am abiding, while ages flee.
The pelting hail and the drizzling rain
Have tried to soften me, long, in vain;
And the dew has tenderly sought to melt,
Or touch my heart; but it was not felt.
There's none to tell you about my birth,
For I am as old as the big, round earth.
The children of men arise, and pass
Out of the world, like blades of grass;
And many foot that on me has trod
Is gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble! but who art _thou_,
Rattling along from the restless bough?"
The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay for a moment abashed and mute:
She never before had been so near
This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt for a time at loss to know
How to answer a thing so coarse and low.
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