"The dim light sickens round my bed, Your looks seem sick with woe, The air feels sick, as, o'er my head Its pantings come and go. "Oh, I am sick in every limb, Sick, sick in every vein ! My eyes and brain with sickness swim, My bones are sick with pain! "What is this weary helplessness, "Mother, I feel as in a dream; My dark'ning senses reel, Like moonlight on a troubled stream: This cannot last, I feel. "Yet, it has lasted-Oh, how long This sick dream seems to me! My God! why is my weakness strong To bear such agony? ""Tis sad to quit a world so fair, To warm young hearts like mine; And, doom'd so early, hard to bear This heavy hand of thine. "I, like a youngling from the nest, By rude hands torn away, Would fain cling to my mother's breast But cannot, must not, stay. "From her and hers, and our sweet home, "I go where voice was never heard, "I go where Thomas went before; And I have borne what Thomas bore: "Farewell!-farewell! to meet again! To share my winding-sheet! "Can't you die with me, mother? Come And clasp me!—not so fast! How close and airless is the room! O mother!"-It is past! The breath is gone, the soul is flown, The lips no longer move; God o'er my child hath slowly thrown His veil of dreadful love. O thou changed dust! pale form that tak'st And, oh, ye dreamy fears, that rest On dark realities! * Why preach ye to the trembling breast, SONG. TUNE. "Mary's Dream." MOTHER! I come from God and bliss ; Though dead, I spurn the tomb's control, No terrors daunt, no cares annoy, Why mourn for him who smiles on thee? Where angels dwell-in glen and grove- For thee, the woe-mark'd cowslip grows, When wilt thou come my flowers to see? Christ's Mother wept on earth for Him, I set a rose our home beside- But in my bower, that knows not woe, The wild hedge-rose and woodbine glow, And red-breasts sing of home to me: Come, Mother, come! we wait for thee. SONG. MAN-LIKE her lover was to see, But stern and cold of soul was he, Of cold and sordid kindred born; And when he found the maid was poor, He pass'd in scorn her decent door, He dug her grave with scorn. Unstain'd as vernal snow, she died; Like snow, that melts on Rother's side, When April's sun in trouble sets: Her life was but a day of showers; And, oh, it closed o'er songless bowers And drooping violets! |