Will others to my darling bear
As true, as deep a love?
“ O God, watch o’er my foster child!
O guard her gentle head!
When minds are high and tempests wild
Protection round her spread!
“ They call again; leave then my breast;
Quit thy true shelter, Jane;
But when deceived, repulsed, opprest,
Come home to me again!”
I read—then dreamily made marks on the margin with my pencil; thinking all the while of other things; thinking that “Jane” was now at my side; no child, but a girl of nineteen; and she might be mine, so my heart affirmed; Poverty’s curse was taken off me; Envy and Jealousy were far away, and unapprized of this our quiet meeting; the frost of the Master’s manner might melt; I felt the thaw coming fast, whether I would or not; no further need for the eye to practise a ha
