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A PENNY AND A PURSE
- A PENNY murmured to a purse:
- “You feel so nice and smooth and warm—
- I have stayed in many worse,—
- Lacking comfort, wanting charm.
- “I’ve passed my life with all degrees,
- In wondrous journeys to and fro—
- And tales of hardship or of ease—
- You ask a penny—he will know!
- “I can tell you, Purse, my friend,
- Many weary weeks I’ve lain—
- Wondering if the need to spend,
- E’er would speed me forth again!
- “Then as fate would have it so,
- Ten times in a single day,
- I’ve changed owners, until, oh!
- I’d have given worlds to stay.
- “I’ve made my bed upon the floor,
- In children’s pockets have I slept—
- And once when I was all her store
- A woman, parting with me, wept.
- “A silent witness I have been,
- Of life and death, of laughter, tears;
- And here a word and there a scene
- Will linger in my mind for years.”
- And so the penny to the purse
- (Until with sleep his eyes grew dim)
- Did thus of many things converse,—
- And then the purse told me of him.
