time of the year, And till Christmas was over and past I knew neither sorrow nor fear. It seems like a dream already, a sweet dream vanished and gone; So hurried and brief while passing away, so long to look back upon. I had only had him three months, and the world lay frozen and dead, When the summons came which we feared and hoped, and he sail’d over sea for our bread. Ah well! it is fine to be wealthy and grand, and never to need to part; But ’tis better to love and be poor, than be rich with an empty heart. Though I thought ’twould have kill’d me to lose him at first, yet was he not going for me? So I hid all the grief in my breast which I knew it would pain him to see. p. 33He’d be back by the autumn, he said; and since his last passionate kiss He has scarcely been out of my thoughts, day or night, for a moment, from that day to this. p. 33 When I wrote to him how I thought it would be, and he answered so full of love; Ah! there was no angel happier than I, in all the bright chorus above; And I seem’d to be lonely no longer, the days slipp’d so swiftly away; And the March winds died, and the sweet April showers gave place to the blossoms of May. And then came the sad summer eve, when I sat with the little frock in the sun, And Annie ran in with the news of the ship. Ah, well! may His will be done! They said that all hands were lost, and I swoon’d away like a stone, And another life came ere I knew he was safe, and that mine was over and gone. So now I lie helpless here, and shall never rise up again, I grow weaker and weaker, day by day, till my weakness itself is a pain. Every morning the creeping dawn, every evening I see from my bed The orange-gold fade into lifeless grey, and the old evening star overhead. Sometimes in the twilight dim, or the awful birth of the day, As I lie, not asleep nor awake, my soul seems to flutter away, p. 34And I seem to be floating beyond the stars, till I thrill with an exquisite pain, And the feeble touch of a tiny hand recalls me to life again. p. 34 And the doctor says she will live. Ah! ’tis hard to leave her alone, And to think she will never know in the world the love of the mother who’s gone! He will tell her of me, by and by,—she will shed me a childish tear; But if I should stoop to her bed in the night, she would start with a horrible fear.
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