I walk my parlor floor, And through the open door I hear a footfall on the chamber stair; To give the boy a call; And then bethink me that he is not there! I thread the crowded street; A satchelled lad I meet, With the same beaming eyes and colored hair: And, as he's running by, Follow him with my eye, Scarcely believing that I know his face is hid Under the coffin-lid; he is not there! Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair; My hand that marble felt; O'er it in prayer I knelt; Yet my heart whispers that I cannot make him dead! When passing by the bed, he is not there! So long watched over with parental care, My spirit and my eye Seek it inquiringly, Before the thought comes that - he is not there! When, at the cool, gray break Of day, from sleep I wake, With my first breathing of the morning air My soul goes up, with joy, To Him who gave my boy, Then comes the sad thought that he is not there! MY CHILD When at the day's calm close, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, I am, in spirit, praying For our boy's spirit, though he is not there! Not there! Where, then, is he? The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear; Is but his wardrobe locked; he is not there! He lives! In all the past And, on his angel brow, I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!" Yes, we all live to God! Father, thy chastening rod So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear, That, in the spirit-land, Meeting at thy right hand, 11 "Twill be our heaven to find that he is there! John Pierpont. THE LITTLE BEACH-BIRD THOU little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why o'er the waves dost fly? O, rather, bird, with me Through the fair land rejoice! Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, Thy cry is weak and scared, As if thy mates had shared The doom of us. Thy wail, What doth it bring to me? Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge Restless and sad; as if, in strange accord With the motion and the roar Of waves that drive to shore, One spirit did ye urge · The Mystery the Word. Of thousands, thou, both sepulcher and pall, From out thy gloomy cells, A tale of mourning tells, Tells of man's woe and fall, His sinless glory fled. Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring TO A WATERFOWL Thy spirit nevermore. Come, quit with me the shore, For gladness and the light, Where birds of summer sing. 13 Richard Henry Dana. TO A WATERFOWL WHITHER, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, The desert and illimitable air, Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. William Cullen Bryant. THANATOPSIS To him who in the love of nature holds Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, |