Part 2 — THE ORPHAN BALLAD SINGERS.

BALLAD.

COMPOSED BY

HENRY RUSSELL.

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Philadelphia: John F. Nunns, 184 Chesnut Street.

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Oh weary, weary are our feet,

And weary weary is our way,

Thro’ many a long and crowded street

We’ve wandered mournfully to-day;

My little sister she is pale,

She is too tender and too young

To bear the autumn’s sullen gale,

And all day long the child has sung.

She was our mother’s favorite child,

Who loved her for her eyes of blue,

And she is delicate and mild,

She cannot do what I can do.

She never met her father’s eyes,

Although they were so like her own;

In some far distant sea he lies,

A father to his child unknown.

The first time that she lisped his name,

A little playful thing was she;

How proud we were,—yet that night came

The tale how he had sunk at sea.

My mother never raised her head;

How strange how white how cold she grew!

It was a broken heart they said—

I wish our hearts were broken too.

We have no home—we have no friends

They said our home no more was ours—

Our cottage where the ash-tree bends,

The garden we had filled with flowers.

The sounding shells our father brought,

That we might hear the sea at home;

Our bees, that in the summer wrought

The winter’s golden honeycomb.

We wandered forth mid wind and rain,

No shelter from the open sky;

I only wish to see again

My mother’s grave and rest and die,

Alas, it is a weary thing

To sing our ballads o’er and o’er:

The songs we used at home to sing—

Alas we have a home no more!