The Bellman Clinton Scollard
“FUNERE MERSIT ACERBO”
(Written by Giosué Carducci at the death of his
little son Dante, and addressed to his brother Dante,
who had taken his own life years before.)
O thou among the Tuscan hills asleep,
Laid with our father in one grassy bed,
Faintly, through the green sod above thy head,
Hast thou not heard a plaintive child’s voice weep?
It is my little son—at thy dark keep
He knocketh, he who wore thy name, thy dread
And sacred name; he too this life hath fled,
Whose ways, my brother, thou didst find so steep.
Among the flower-borders as he played,
By sunny, childish visions smiled upon,
The Shadow caught him to that world how other,—
Thy world long since! So now to that chill shade,
Oh, welcome him! as backward toward the sun
He turns his head, to look, and call his mother.
The Bellman Ruth Shepard Phelps
AFTERWARDS
There was a day when death to me meant tears,
And tearful takings-leave that had to be,
And awed embarkings on an unshored sea,
And sudden disarrangement of the years.
But now I know that nothing interferes
With the fixed forces when a tired man dies;
That death is only answerings and replies,
The chiming of a bell which no one hears,
The casual slanting of a half-spent sun,
The soft recessional of noise and coil,
The coveted something time nor age can spoil;
I know it is a fabric finely spun
Between the stars and dark; to seize and keep,
Such glad romances as we read in sleep.
Boston Transcript Mahlon Leonard Fisher
EVENING
Go, little sorrows! From the evening wood
Faint odors rise, that touch the heart like tears
With inarticulate comfort. Lo, she bears
A weary load—small cares that drug the blood,
Small envies, sick desires for lesser good,—
All day, till now the evening re-appears,
They drop away, and she with wonder rears
Her aching height from needless servitude.
The tree-tops are all music; light and soft
The brook’s small feet go tinkling toward the sea
Bearing the little day’s distress afar;
While yonder, in the stillness set aloft,
My one great Grief, still glimmering down on me,
Smiles tremulous as a bereavèd Star.