How often I recall it now:
My darling tossing on his bed,
I sitting there in mute despair,
Smoothing the curls that crowned his head.
They did not speak to me of death—
A feeling here had told me so;
What could I say or do but pray
That I might be the first to go?
Yet, thinking of him standing there
Out yonder as the years go by,
Waiting for me to come, I see
’Twas better he should wait, not I.
For when I walk the vale of death,
Above the wail of Jordan’s flow
Shall rise a song that shall make me strong—
The call of the child that was first to go.
HUSHABY, SWEET MY OWN
FAIR is the castle up on the hill—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
The night is fair, and the waves are still,
And the wind is singing to you and to me
In this lowly home beside the sea—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
On yonder hill is store of wealth—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
And revelers drink to a little one’s health;
But you and I bide night and day
For the other love that has sailed away—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
See not, dear eyes, the forms that creep
Ghostlike, O my own!
Out of the mists of the murmuring deep;
Oh, see them not and make no cry
Till the angels of death have passed us by—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
Ah, little they reck of you and me—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
In our lonely home beside the sea;
They seek the castle up on the hill,
And there they will do their ghostly will—
Hushaby, O my own!
Here by the sea a mother croons
“Hushaby, sweet my own!”
In yonder castle a mother swoons
While the angels go down to the misty deep
Bearing a little one fast asleep—
Hushaby, sweet my own!
CHILD AND MOTHER
O MOTHER-my-love, if you’ll give me your hand,
And go where I ask you to wander,
I will lead you away to a beautiful land—
The Dreamland that’s waiting out yonder.
We’ll walk in a sweet-posie garden out there
Where moonlight and starlight are streaming
And the flowers and the birds are filling the air
With the fragrance and music of dreaming.