Yes, he was fairer than the flow’rs
Of rarest hue,
His smile sweet as the morning hour’s
Gleam in the dew,
And as we looked into his eyes
So large and brown,
It seemed an angel from the skies
Had just come down.
What heaven gave, again it took—
Its ways are good,
But now in pity it does look
On motherhood,—
Whose love so young, so pure, so deep,
Eats sorrow’s bread,—
And whispers: “Woman do not weep,
He is not dead.”
A FUNERAL OF A CHILD ON CHRISTMAS EVE
The dusk was upon hill and wood,
Upon the fields of soft new snow,
The pine-trees in God’s acre stood,
With branches laden, bending low,
And marble shaft and monument,
Like mystic, beings draped and pale,
Seemed listening to the bells that sent
Their Christmas greeting through the vale.
Around an open, little grave
There stood a group of weeping folk;
“The Lord hath taken what he gave,
We sorrow not as without hope,
For he who gave us Christmas eve
Said: ‘Let the children come to me,
Of such the kingdom is,’ they live,
With him in joy eternally.”
Thus spake the minister of God,
But still the parent’s heart did sob,
And when they heaped the frozen clod,
He felt that heav’n his hope did rob,
Congealing tears did cease to fall,
And thicker, denser grew the gloom,
The church-bell’s clang jarred on his soul,
He wished that grave for him had room.
THE WREATH
How shall I shake off the darkness,
The nightmare that feeds on my soul?—
I looked through the windows this morning,
Upon the embankments of snow,
That ridged to the porch of my dwelling,
And covered its floor,
Where a half buried branch of an ever-green rested,
Torn from a discarded Christmas-tree,
Back of the church;—
The terrible wind of the night
Had cut it and carried it thither,
Where in the white, like a wreath it protruded its green,
A wreath for the dead,
Whose soul mid the storm of the night
Had taken its flight.—
O, God, how utterly eerie it seemed
To my mind that had worried alone
Through the vigils of night!
And on that day came the message,
That she was no more.
LINES WRITTEN ON RECEIVING NEWS OF MY FATHER’S DEATH
I sit alone in evening-gloom,
The night is cold, and shrill the wind,
I make a church out of my room,
To find some solace for the mind.