1831. THE DEATH BED WE watch'd her breathing thro' the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. So silently we seem'd to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her living out. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied We thought her dying when she slept, For when the morn came dim and sad Her quiet eyelids closed-she had Another morn than ours. 4 8 12 16 Thomas Hood. RESIGNATION THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair! 4 The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. 8 12 We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funeral tapers May be heaven's distant lamps. There is no Death! What seems so is transi tion; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death. She is not dead,-the child of our affection,But gone unto that school 16 20 Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule. In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 24 Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. 28 Day after day we think what she is doing Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though un spoken, May reach her where she lives. Not as a child shall we again behold her; In our embraces we again enfold her, But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, 32 36 40 And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 44 And though at times impetuous with emotion And anguish long suppressed, The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, That cannot be at rest, We will be patient, and assuage the feeling By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. 1849. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 48 52 SHE CAME AND WENT As a twig trembles, which a bird As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, 1849. James Russell Lowell. 8 12 16 20 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL THE Snow had begun in the gloaming, Had been heaping field and highway Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara I stood and watched by the window I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn As did robins the babes in the wood. 12 16 20 |