Mother’s Hymn at Eventide
A little girl would clutch her mother’s hand and the two would go through the tall grass of an English meadow to a stile. There they both loved to stand to watch the sunset. Just when the last crimson streak was dying in the west, the mother would sing, in her rich Welsh voice:
“Forever with the Lord!
Amen, so let it be;
Life from the dead is in that word,
’Tis immortality.”
The manner in which the woman greeted the passing of the day left a memory with the young daughter which the latter carried with her through the years, and brought with her when she came to America. “Sing, kitten,” the mother would sometimes exclaim. Then, with faces still set westward, the daughter would chirp with her little voice, and the two would sing:
“Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day’s march nearer home.”
The girl was still young when her mother reached
“The bright inheritance of saints,
Jerusalem above;”
but she carried with her the memory of being led into a room where she saw her father kneeling by the bed, with his face hidden in his hands. The clergyman was there administering Holy Communion; also present was the family physician. An older sister was sobbing.
Rushing to the bedside, the child gazed at the bright, beloved face of her mother. She was smiling. Her lips began to move. Beatrice Plumb, who once told this story about her mother and herself, said that even before she put her ear close to her mother, she knew that the latter was singing their eventide hymn.
Opening her eyes, the mother faintly whispered, “Sing, Kitten!” Once more, the last time together, mother and little daughter were singing their old sunset song:
“Forever with the Lord!
Amen so let it be;
Life from the dead is in that word,
’Tis immortality.”
Carved on the mother’s tombstone, and cherished in the daughter’s memory, were the words:
“Forever with the Lord!”