Would climb no more, with sunny smile, its happy parent’s knee;
Perhaps some gentle household voice, that sighed “farewell” with pain,
Might never welcome their return to that loved home again;
Then came the thought of glistening eyes, which long had done with tears,
Eyes that had kept an anxious watch o’er childhood’s reckless years;
While mem’ry dwelt upon that last and earnest gaze of love,
Which shows the heart withholds its seal from what the lips approve.
They feared those silvery locks, that told ’twas almost “close of day,”
Would to the grave go down, and they, their children, far away!
A moment nature shrank—the thought was too, too full of pain—