Explore "The Ugly Princess" by Charles Kingsley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My parents bow, and lead them forth, / For all the crowd to see -- / Ah well! the people might not care / To cheer a dwarf like me.
They little know how I could love, / How I could plan and toil, / To swell those drudges' scanty gains, / Their mites of rye and oil.
They little know what dreams have been / My playmates, night and day; / Of equal kindness, helpful care, / A mother's perfect sway.
Now earth to earth in convent walls, / To earth in churchyard sod: / I was not good enough for man, / And so am given to God.
Bertrich in the Eifel, 1851.