In silence? What could this portend?
Such muteness he had never shown;
Was he so very near the end?
Ah, Leo, had I only known!
For his grand eyes, so large and bright,
Though turned, through sound, my form to find,
Were totally devoid of sight;
He faced me in the darkness … blind!
What could such gloom have been to him,
As weeks and months had crept away,
While all the outer world grew dim,
Till endless night eclipsed the day!
What had it meant to him to wake
And mid familiar things to grope?
To hear old sounds on shore and lake,
Yet wander darkly without hope!
But now, his head upon my knee,
He tried in various ways to show
That, though my face he could not see,
He knew the voice of long ago.
Yes, now it was quite plain
That I had come again.
Within my arms he breathed his last,
In my embrace his noble head
Drooped back, and left to me … the Past,
With tender memories of the dead.
He lies beneath the stately trees,
Whose ample shade he loved the best,
Mid flowers, whose perfume every breeze
Wafts lightly o'er his place of rest.
Yet somehow still I watch and wait
For him, as he once watched for me;
At every footstep near my gate
I look, his bounding form to see.
Good-night? … Good-bye! for I must leave thee,
My boat is waiting on the shore;
May I not hope that it will grieve thee,
When thou shalt see me here no more?
Such thoughts, I know, to-day are flouted;
"Have statues souls?" the cynic sneers;
But I am happier to have doubted,
And loved thee thus these many years.