Classic Poem

A FISHERMAN'S children, we dwelt by the sea,
My good little brother Rinaldo and me,
Contented and happy as happy could be—
Of blossoms no other
Was fair as the bright one that bloomed on his cheek,
And gentle—oh never a lamb was so meek—
I wish he were living and heard what I speak,
My lost little brother!

One night when our father was out on the sea,
We went through the moonlight, my brother and me,
And watched for his coming beneath an old tree,
The leaves of which hooded
A raven whose sorrowful croak in the shade
So dismally sounded, it made us afraid,
And kneeling together for shelter we prayed
From the evil it boded.

At the school on the hill, not a week from that day,
The thick cloud of playing broke wildly away,
And the laughter that lately went ringing so gay
Was changed to a crying,
And leaping the ditches and climbing the wall,
'Twixt home and the schoolhouse came one at our call,
And told us the youngest and best of them all,
Rinaldo was dying.

There was watching and weeping, and when he was dead
'Neath that tree by the seaside they made him a bed;
A stone that was nameless and rude at his head—
His feet had another;
And the schoolmaster said, though we laid him so low,
And so humbly and nameless, we surely should know
For his beauty, where only the beautiful go—
My good little brother.