The Children's Book by  Horace E. Scudder

Poor Susan

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,

There's a thrush that sings loud,—it has sung for three years;

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the bird.


'T is a note of enchantment: what ails her? She sees

A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide,

And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.


Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,

Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;

And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,

The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.


She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,—

The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;

The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,

And the colors have all passed away from her eyes.

William Wordsworth


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