" MAKE haste! make haste, my darling! — the long, long year has flown
At last, O best and dearest, my heart can claim its own!
I bore the weary waiting, but now the end is nigh,
Each little moment lingers as if 't would never fly.

" Through days of anxious toiling thy face was as a charm
To soothe my troubled spirit, to nerve my fainting arm,
Whatever hopes were darkened, whatever cares oppressed,
The thought of thee was always like blessed dreams of rest.

" The little home we talked of is ready, fresh and bright,
I almost see you smiling beside its hearth to-night;
Make haste! — I thought my spirit could mock at adverse fate,
But when love draws so near us 't is bitter hard to wait.

" And bring the fond old mother, God bless her! Tell her, dear,
She will not miss the old land when once we have her here;
The graves she left behind her will wring her heart awhile,
But soon again we 'll welcome the sunshine of her smile.

" Alas! the knees I knelt at, are cold beneath the stone, —
She 'll be to me, please Heaven, as if she were my own;
And peace and rest and comfort shall fill her failing years,
With little room for sorrow and little cause for tears.

" Then say your good-by, gayly — and if the tears should start,
Oh crush them back, my darling, and hide them in your heart:
My arms will soon be round you, my lips will ease your pain,
And teach the smile to linger around your lips again. "
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Swift came the wife and mother across the wave-tossed deep,
Alas for fond hearts' yearning! Alas for eyes that weep!
They found a swifter message of deeper peace had sped,
And the lips that burned to meet them were pale and cold and dead!