Gathering, with braided hair, around the hearth,
Where sat their mother; and that mother’s face
Its grave sweet smile yet wearing in the place
Where so it ever smiled! Perchance the prayer
Learn’d at her knee came back on his despair;
The blessing from her voice, the very tone
Of her “Good-night” might breathe from boyhood gone!
—He started and look’d up: thick cypress boughs,
Full of strange sound, waved o’er him, darkly red
In the broad stormy firelight; savage brows,