She was no dainty city belle,
Half art and half deceit,

And yet no fairer vision
The human eye could greet.

Naught knew she of city life
Or fashion's changing art—

Nature created her a belle
And blessed her with a heart.

Her eyes were large and soulful,
Her face divinely fair;

Her form was lithe and graceful
And a golden dream her hair.

Her voice was full of melody:
Each tone to listening ear

Seemed to awake such music
As angels delight to hear.

Beautiful, pure and guileless,
With the faith of a trusting child,

She worshiped the God of nature
With a spirit undefiled.

She lived with honest parents
In a home on the mountain side,

Where peace and plenty lingered
And love was true and tried.

Parental duress was unknown,
For love's restraints are mild:

A mother's love and father's hope
Were centered in this child.

The acknowledged belle of the mountain,
She spurned the coquette's art,

Determining never to promise
Her hand without her heart.

She could not love her suitors
With the love a wife should give,

And deemed it sin without such love
In wedlock's bonds to live.

The idol of many a noble heart,
None dared their suit to press:

Thus they wound the gentle spirit
That pitied, but could not bless.

Grateful for each friendly smile
That o'er her face would beam,

She reigned an empress absolute
In each fond lover's dream.

A petted child of fashion,
The heir to boundless wealth,

Came one day among them
To recruit his waning health.

These hospitable mountain people
Welcomed the haggard boy,

And strove to make his visit
One radiant scene of joy.

They bade their darling daughter
To be the stranger's guide,

And show him all the beauties
Of her loved mountain side.

Together they scaled the mountains,
With many a merry shout;

Together they garnered the flowers
Or angled the nimble trout.

He spake of his home in the city,
Of the wealth he soon would own;

Promised to make Lenora his wife
Ere the summer days had flown.

Lenora loved this stranger
With a soul-absorbing love,

And trembled 'neath his caresses
As helpless as a dove.

He was a master of the art
That robs the halls of Truth

To gain what passion courts,
Tho' it blasts the hopes of youth.

His honied words of flattery,
Uttered with seductive art,

Were music to the listening ear
And soon deceived the heart.

Lenora confided in his worth,
Receiving each promise as truth—

How could she doubt her only love
In the trustful hours of youth?

Assured of an early marriage,
She yielded to him one day

That priceless germ of innocence
And fell—to trust a prey.

She hoped this sacrifice would gain
Her lover's every thought;

This were a boon, if death could buy.
She deemed not dearly bought.

Little she dreamed that fatal hour
That love had sped the dart

That stamped her as an outcast,
With a withered, broken heart.

Eugene went to his city home,
Swearing to soon return

And claim as wife the girl he knew
His parents proud would spurn.

Summer and autumn days passed by
And the winter's cold set in,

Yet the recreant lover came not
To the child he taught to sin.

A mother's ever watchful eye
Discovered her daughter's shame,

Heard her story with breaking heart,
But uttered no word of blame.

She knew her daughter's downfall
Was the fruit of love beguiled,

But hated the heartless stranger
Who ruined her trusting child.

God alone can measure the pain
That child and mother felt,

As, locked in lingering embrace,
In agony they knelt

And poured in heaven's listening ear
Their heart-destroying grief;

And who so bold as to deny
That Heaven sent relief?

The father learned his daughter's sin
And drove her from his door.

"Go!" he said, "you guilty wretch,
You are my child no more."

Stung by these cruel, terrible words,
She fled in wild affright

In search of the heartless lover,
Her fearful wrongs to right.

She tracked the guilty miscreant down,
And he, to save his name,

Hid her till her child was born
In a house of doubtful fame.

The world looked on the helpless child
With cold, unpitying eye.

The villian bade his dupe go home,
"Repent of her sin and die."

She heard, and from her glittering eye
No tear of anguish sped—

With dagger drawn she reached his side,
And struck the villain dead!

With her babe she sought her father's door
And pled with a piteous cry

A shelter for her hapless babe
While the storm was raging high.

"Begone, you wretch!" the father cried,
"I curse the hour that gave

Birth to a wretch whose sin has laid
My wife within the grave."

"My mother dead! and I still live?
Ah! whither shall I fly?

O God! protect my hapless babe,
And suffer me to die."

The storm increased; she wandered on
Almost till break of day,

Till weary, wet and almost dead,
She knelt in the path to pray.

The sky was lit from end to end
By the lightning's awful glare,

And a falling tree pinned both to earth
As they knelt in the act of prayer!

They found them thus in the morning light,
And the father's grief was wild.

He tenderly looked on the touching scene
And at last forgave his child!

They buried Lenora and her nameless babe
Close beside her mother's clay,

And each one spake in kindly tones
Of the hapless ones that day.

The arm that sent the dagger home
Was nerved by a brain dethroned:

'Tis Lenora's was an awful deed,
But her terrible death atoned.

Aye, let us hope the much-wronged child
Has reached a home above

Where babes can live who have no name
And 'tis not sin to love.