THE STRANGER'S PRAYER.
THE spring wind crept through the city car,
Threading the crowded thoroughfare,
Lifting in frolic the floating curl
From the snowy throat of the laughing girl;
Turning the leaf of a reader's book,
Chasing a straw to the farthest nook;
Out at a window, in at the door,
Like a welcome guest who had been before.
It swayed the fold of the mourner's veil,
Lifting a lock from her forehead pale,
With a tender touch for the thread of gray
That had whitened there since a vanished May;
It dried a tear on her pallid cheek,
That told as plain as a tear could speak,
Without the gaze of the sombre eyes,
Of a child gone on into Paradise.
Evermore turning her glances sad
To the boyish form of a sailor-lad,
Her vis-á-vis, who, in day-dreams sweet,
Saw not the scenes of the busy street;
She watched the light of his flashing eye,
As blue as the tint of the summer sky;
"Some mother's darling,"; she said—"not mine;
'Thy will be done', O Father! thine!";
Patient the childless mother sat,
Watching the ribbon upon his hat,
