Then comes the frosty winter night, With crystal boughs and icy brooks, With snow-capped hills, afar and white, A-lending light to earth’s dark nooks, Diffusing rays and borrowed gleams O’er darkened woods and shaded streams.
And then behold the dreary night, Without the spell of moon or stars, Whose somber silence seems to blight Earth’s finest phase, and chills and mars The lonesome landscape, crowds the mind With weird, wild fancies undefined;
And gives each form a phantom shape, Creating visions gaunt and grim, And, as a pall that mourners drape, The clouds surround the shadows dim, Filling the heart with nameless fears, Till night’s dull darkness disappears.
As I sat by my window one cool autumn eve, And watched the dim shades on the opposite lawn, From my silent surroundings sweet fancies I weave, Unmindful of time and the approach of the dawn. There I sat in the quiet and beauty of night, Till the sentinel stars grew dim with the light.
When recalled to myself from the silence around, While Nature was sleeping in peaceful repose, By the meager approach of a weak, wailing sound, Which on the night air at intervals rose, Growing faint and fainter as the evening chill Crept over the landscape so somber and still.
Whence comes that faint cry so plaintive and thrilling, That dies on the air at each waft of the breeze? Why creeps o’er my heart this sensation so chilling, As I listen enchained ’mid the rustle of trees? At length all is quiet but the night-watch’s tread, So I hasten beside him, and tell him my dread.
Together we seek in the dimness of dawn, ’Mid grass and dead leaves becovered with dew, To unravel the mystery heard on the lawn; And the darkness dispelling, we find it too true, That a babe, sweet and chubby, but a week or two old, Is lying neglected alone in the cold.
In a coarse blanket-shawl, soiled, ragged, and old, Lay the poor little sleeper, the picture of grief, Aweary with weeping and hunger and cold, Kind nature had brought it this happy relief, Its downy cheeks wet with the cold evening dew, Its chubby fists doubled and dimpled and blue.
A moment we gazed on its rude little bed, And wondered what misery it must atone, Why it was left there--what mystery led To expose it to perish, forsaken, alone, Was it treachery, wickedness, want, or woe, That tempted the mother to abandon it so?