)
So little and so helpless and so dear--
Let not the song be lost, the flower decay!
His voice, his waking eyes, his gentle sleeping:
The smallest things are safest in thy keeping,--
Sweet memory, keep our child with us alway.
November, 1903.
THE WINDOW
All night long, by a distant bell
The passing hours were notched
On the dark, while her breathing rose and fell;
And the spark of life I watched
In her face was glowing, or fading,--who could tell?--
And the open window of the room,
With a flare of yellow light,
Was peering out into the gloom,
Like an eye that searched the night.
_Oh, what do you see in the dark, little window, and why do you peer?
"I see that the garden is crowded with creeping forms of fear:
Little white ghosts in the locust-tree, wave in the night-wind's breath,
And low in the leafy laurels the lurking shadow of death."_
Sweet, clear notes of a waking bird
Told of the passing away
Of the dark,--and my darling may have heard;
For she smiled in her sleep, while the ray
Of the rising dawn spoke joy without a word,
Till the splendour born in the east outburned
The yellow lamplight, pale and thin,
And the open window slowly turned
To the eye of the morning, looking in.
Pages:
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159