God only knows! but he hath given us hope,
Yea, something far more confident than hope,
That that dear treasure shall again be ours
In heaven itself, with all the friends we loved
On earth below!
Farewell! dear spot, farewell!
ONE eve, one lovely summer's eve,
I reached the well-known ways,
And long-lost haunts that made me grieve
To think of schoolboy days.
I mused o'er all that mankind lose
On life's deceitful road,
Until I reached at evening's close
A cherished friend's abode.
His house stood near the house of God
And all its tombstones gray,
And near the consecrated sod
The harvest moon was in the west,
And I went forth alone,
An hour before the hour of rest,
To read our family stone.
For three long years I had not trode
The churchyard's dreary way,
But now I reached the house of God
And all its tombstones gray.
'Twas silence-save the breaking waves,
The rushing of the tide,
And, oh, how peaceful were the graves
As they lay side by side!
I read the names, and shed
Where my name shall be seen,
When I forget my present fears,
My sorrows that have been.
Upon the very spot I lay
Where yet I hope to rest,
And pressed the very flowers that may
And mourns o'er those whose graves are green, Yet strives to be resigned.
What will not woman when she loves?
Yet lost, alas! what can restore her?-RODGERS.
Ан! see upon yon old gray stone,
Beneath the blasted tree,
A wretched female sits alone,
Where every branch that's o'er her thrown
Seems wretched even as she.
The hopes are gone she cherished most,
And she is restless as a ghost
That haunts the midnight gloom;
And she a mournful tale can tell,
Even mournful as a funeral knell
When some one we have loved well
Is bearing to the tomb.
She seldom loves to tell her tale,
"Tis apt to turn her head,
But murmurs in the moon-beam pale,
When strangers oft have heard her wail,
And thought 'twas from the dead.
She-when her senses come again-
Oft weeps that grief has turned her brain,
And she will speak to none;
Yet I have seen, when she could trace
Compassion in a friendly face,
That she would leave her resting place,
And all her sorrows own.
"O yes, I loved! as fondly loved
As ever mortal did,
And many a pleasing eve we roved,
And many an hour of transport proved,
Among the woodlands hid.
But now the tale I must impart-
'Tis only to the feeling heart
Can all its force be known;
For, oh, how I was left forlorn,
And how my anguished soul was torn,
When, on our very nuptial morn,
My plighted youth was gone!
"Yes, he was gone! I know not where-
But I was left to shame;
And, strangers, I was left to bear
A pang more dreadful than despair,
That hath no earthly name.
Oh, how my parents wept for me,
And thought, by counterfeited glee,
My grief might be beguiled;
And still I struggled to conceal
The anguish that could never heal,
The truth I shuddered to reveal-
My God! I was with child.
"And when my hand my mother took
And pressed it in her own,
I could not bear her pitying look,
And every nerve with tremors shook
Through fears to her unknown.
And when my father knelt at even,
He poured his fervent prayer to Heaven
For his afflicted child-
His duteous child! Eternal Lord!
He little knew how I abhorred
My very self, though he adored
The wretch that was beguiled.
“Oh, many a weary, weary day
I never tasted food,
And stole from every eye away,
Unseen, unknown, to weep and
Amid the lonesome wood;
And when we circled round our hearth, The happiest, once, perchance, on earth, At evening's dewy fall,
That happiness to me was gone, Though in each eye compassion shone, I knew a truth would soon be knownWould break the peace of all.
"And many a weary, weary night
My eyes I could not close,
But trembled till the morning light
Chased off the phantoms of affright
That in my anguish rose ;
Or, if a moment's rest I knew,
Some frightful vision met my view,
And woke me with a scream;
Till days of want and nights of dread
Made me I knew not what I did,
And life, to my bewildered head,
Seemed even itself a dream.
|