Classic Poem

Dear mother! thou art gone, and I,
Thy eldest, well-beloved son,
Was not thy couch of suffering by,
Nor gazed thy pallid brow upon —
When like a shadow, dark and deep,
Death's angel came and bore away
Thy soul, on peaceful wings of sleep,
To regions of eternal day!

The stern decrees of God are just;
But it was hard for me to know
That they had laid thee in the dust,
Unbaptized by such tears as flow
In torrents from these filial eyes —
That on thy ear no accents fell,
Welcome as music from the skies,
Of him thou lov'dst so long and well.

I came and stood beside thy grave,
Beside the cold and wintry earth,
Where bleak winds wail and tempests rave —
So different from that pleasant hearth,
Where, in the sweetness of thy smile,
The firelight shed a warmer gleam,
And I was happy all the while,
As in my boyhood's morning dream.

I stood, a broken-hearted man,
Of love bereft, with hope at strife;
Feeling as if a solemn ban
Descended, pall-like, on my life,
And there were nothing left between
Inevitable doom and me —
Nothing beyond this transient scene,
But one wide, blank eternity!