“Tell me about my son, dear friend, for I can bear to know,
Now that my heart is stayed by prayer, that history of woe!
But whence was it, of seven sons, all men of strength and pride,
This only one—the gentlest one—forsook his mother’s side!
“That he in whom a flower, a star, a love-inspired word,
The poet’s heart, all tenderness, even from his boyhood stirred;
Who was my dearest counsellor, in his dead father’s place;
Who was a daughter unto me, who ne’er did one embrace.
“How was it that he only left his home, his native land,
He only, kindest, gentlest, and youngest of my band?
That he whom I had looked to close mine eyes—to lay me low,
Died first, and far away! Oh God, thy counsels who shall know!
“But murmuring thus, I sin! Dear friend, forgive a mother’s grief,
And tell me of my son; thy words will bring assured relief:
Tell me of each minutest look—even of his sufferings tell,
My heart takes comfort from thy voice, for thou didst love him well!”
“I loved him well, oh, passing well! all he had been to thee—
Friend, counsellor, the spirit’s life—so had he been to me!
Yet murmur not, thou broken heart, our vision fails to show
The scope of that mysterious good whose base is human woe!
“Thy best-beloved murmured not, his faith was never dim,
And that strong love which was his life, sprang everywhere for him,
We saw him droop, and many a one, else scarce to love beguiled,
Watched him, as tender parents watch a favourite drooping child.
“For the hot plains where he had lain, by cureless wounds oppressed,
We bore him to the northern hills, to a sweet land of rest.
Oh, what a joy it was to him to feel the cool winds blow,
To see the golden morning light array the peaks of snow!
“What joy to see familiar things where’er his footsteps trod;
The oak-tree in the mountain-cleft; the daisy on the sod;
The primrose and the violet; the green moss of the rill;
The crimson wild-briar rose, and the strawberry of the hill!
“How often these sweet living flowers were bathed in blissful tears,
For then his loving spirit drank the joy of bygone years;
And sitting ’mong those giant hills, his boyhood round him lay—
That sunny time of careless peace, so long since past away.
“He told me of his English home; I knew it well before:
Mine eyes had seen its trees, or ere my shadow crossed the door;
The very sun-dial on the green, I knew its face again;
And the small summer parlour with its jasmine-wreathed pane.
“And thou! all thou hadst been to him, he told me; bade me seek
Thy face, and to thy broken heart dear words of comfort speak:
Oh, mother of the blessed dead, weep not; sweet thoughts of thee,
Like ministering angels at the last, the joyous soul set free!
“Oh, mother of the dead, weep not as if that far-off grave
Possessed thy spirit’s best beloved—‘thy beautiful, thy brave;’
The gifted, living soul lies not beneath that Eastern sod,
All thou hast cherished liveth still, and calleth thee to God!”
