Ah! little intruder,
  What is it you wear
So close to your breast? 
  Sure but hand in despair
Could have written the message
  Unconscious you bear,
And “loved” and “God blessed” you
  While leaving you there. 
Let’s see the story
  ’Tis telling for you;
How brief and pathetic;
  But can it be true? 
A mother heart brokenly
  Praying in grief
From hand of a stranger
  Her baby’s relief. 
“He’s helpless and homeless,
  But stainless as snow;
O, take him and keep him—­
  My poor little Joe.”

That’s all there is of it,
  If false or if true;
Yet long enough seems it,
  And sad enough, too. 
No love-welcomed greeted
  The sweet baby face,
In the life that gave his life
  There was not a place. 
No place for the baby,
  There’s none for him here,
No heart that may give him
  A smile or a tear. 
Off to the refuge,
  For such, he must go,
He’s only a foundling—­
  Poor little Joe.

Deserted, forsaken,
  Thrust out in the strife,
Adrift on the pitiless
  Ocean of life. 
What will become of him,
  Who may decide
If good or if evil
  His life shall betide. 
No tender caresses
  Ever to know,
Nor guidance, nor blessing—­
  Poor little Joe.

* * * * *

FATE.

Ruth was a laughing-eyed prattler,
  Thoughtless, and happy, and free;
She planted a seed in the garden,
  And said:  “It will grow to a tree—­
      A beautiful blossoming tree.”

The birds and the squirrels played round it,
  As careless and merry was she,
But not tree ever grew from her planting—­
  No beautiful blossoming tree.

Ruth was a winsome-faced maiden,
  Happy, and hopeful, and free;
She planted a seed in the garden,
  And smilingly waited to see—­
      A beautiful blossoming tree.

She covered the ground up with flowers,
  The butterfly came, and the bee,
But no tree ever grew from her planting—­
  No beautiful blossoming tree.

Ruth was a pale saddened woman,
  Thoughtful, with tremblings and fears,
She planted a seed in the garden,
  And watered the place with her tears—­
      And watched it with tremblings and fears.

The winds and the rains beat upon it,
  The lightnings flashed o’er it in glee;
But she sleeps ’neath the tree of her planting—­
  A beautiful blossoming tree.

THE GHOSTS IN THE HEART.

They came in the hush of the midnight,
  In the glare of the noonday start
Out from the graves we made them—­
  The graves we made in the heart.

There is love with its fickle fancies;
  Its grave was so wide and deep,
And we heaped the mound with oblivion,
  But the soul of love could not sleep.