THE WANDERER FROM THE FOLD.
How few, of all the hearts that loved, Are grieving for thee now;And why should mine to-night be moved With such a sense of woe?
Too often thus, when left alone, Where none my thoughts can see, Comes back a word, a passing tone From thy strange history.
Sometimes I seem to see thee rise, A glorious child again;All virtues beaming from thine eyes That ever honoured men:
Courage and truth, a generous breast Where sinless sunshine lay:
A being whose very presence blest Like gladsome summer-day.
O, fairly spread thy early sail, And fresh, and pure, and free, Was the first impulse of the gale Which urged life's wave for thee!
Why did the pilot, too confiding, Dream o'er that ocean's foam, And trust in Pleasure's careless guiding To bring his vessel home?
For well he knew what dangers frowned, What mists would gather, dim;What rocks and shelves, and sands lay round Between his port and him.
The very brightness of the sun The splendour of the main, The wind which bore him wildly on Should not have warned in vain.
An anxious gazer from the shore--
I marked the whitening wave, And wept above thy fate the more Because--I could not save.
It recks not now, when all is over:
But yet my heart will be A mourner still, though friend and lover Have both forgotten thee!
WARNING AND REPLY.
In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, A grey stone standing over thee;Black mould beneath thee spread, And black mould to cover thee.
"Well--there is rest there, So fast come thy prophecy;The time when my sunny hair Shall with grass roots entwined be."
But cold--cold is that resting-place, Shut out from joy and liberty, And all who loved thy living face Will shrink from it shudderingly, "Not so. HERE the world is chill, And sworn friends fall from me:
But THERE--they will own me still, And prize my memory."
Farewell, then, all that love, All that deep sympathy:
Sleep on: Heaven laughs above, Earth never misses thee.