'No, Aunt Milly.'
'I want to show you this; it was written on a stray leaf, and I ventured to capture it; it may help you to understand that in her own way Olive has suffered.'
Richard took the paper from her without a word; but Mildred noticed his hand shook. Was it cruel thus to call his hardness to remembrance? For a moment Mildred's soft heart wavered over the task she had set for herself.
It was scrawled in Olive's school-girl hand, and in some parts was hard to decipher, especially as now and then a blot of teardrops had rendered it illegible; but nevertheless Richard succeeded in reading it.
'How speed our lost in the Unknown Land,
Our dear ones gone to that distant strand?
Do they know that our hearts are sore
With longing for faces that never come,
With longing to hear in our silent home
The voices that sound no more?
There's a desolate look by the old hearth-stone,
That tells of some light of the household gone
To dwell with the ransomed band;
But none may follow their upward track,
And never, ah! never, a word comes back
To tell of the Unknown Land!
'We know by a gleam on the brow so pale,
When the soul bursts forth from its mortal veil,
And the gentle and good departs,
That the dying ears caught the first faint ring
Of the songs of praise that the angels sing;
But back to our yearning hearts
Comes never, ah! never, a word to tell
That the purified spirit we love so well
Is safe on the heavenly strand;
That the Angel of Death has another gem
To set in the star-decked diadem
Of the King of the Unknown Land!
'How speed our lost in the realms of air
We would ask—we would ask, Do they love us there?
Do they know that our hearts are sore,
That the cup of sorrow oft overflows,
And our eyes grow dim with weeping for those—
For those who shall "weep no more "?
And when the Angel of Death shall call,
And earthly chains from about us fall,
Will they meet us with clasping hand?
But never, ah! never a voice replies
From the "many mansions" above the skies
To tell of the Unknown Land!'[1]
'Aunt Milly, why did you show me this? and Richard's eyes, full of reproachful pain, fixed themselves somewhat sternly on her face.
'Because I want you to understand. Look, there is another on the next leaf; see, she has called it "A little while" and "for ever." My poor girl, every word is so true of her own earnest nature.'
'"For ever," they are fading,
Our beautiful, our bright;
They gladden us "a little while,"
Then pass away from sight;
"A little while" we're parted
From those who love us best,
Who gain the goal before us
And enter into rest.