The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield ::

Ere the cloud was on thy spirit,
Or the blight upon thy bosom,
Thou wert summoned to inherit
The realms of bliss and blossom.
With a bounding soul and limb,
Thou didst tread Earth undefiled—
Now thy song is with the cherubim,
My bless'd and gifted child!

In bereavement's lonely hours,
In the morn and evening prayer,
In the summer's twilight bowers,
And the autumn's sweetest air;
By the bed, the board, the hearth,
And in every scene I sigh—
Yet could I bring thee back to earth?
My angel son on high!

In my heart and brain are bitter throes,
And my eyes are dim with tears,
While I think that, mid my thousand woes,
I joyed in thy infant years:
And the hopes, the pride, the love,
That I shrined in thee, my son!
But thy spirit is above
With the High and Holy One!

Thou canst never feel, like me,
The stings of man and time,
Nor turn from woe and sin to flee
But to meet despair and crime!

189

From the fount of Thought Divine,
Thou didst rise, a seraph, here—
And I bless my God that ought of mine
Can know no grief or fear.

Thou hast gone to wing the glorious spheres
Mid the train of cherub choirs,
And thy voice shall swell, through deathless years,
To the hymns of archangel lyres:
But I, as my weary steps wend on,
And my lonely heart deplores,
Shall never—never hear, my son!
Its tones from the distant shores.

The lingering seasons will pass away,
And the years of my mourning fly,
Yet never will break again the day
That wakes the light of thy glistening eye!
With a heart convulsed and a brain distraught,
And a quivering hand, I pressed
The death-weights on those orbs of thought,
And bore thee to thy rest.

Oh, the last words on thy dying lips,
Ere thy voice in spasms died,
And thy thoughts ran wild in thy brain's eclipse,
As I left thy death-bed's side!
“Oh, my dear father! where I am
I would you were!”—but, alas! my child!
Thou standest in glory before The Lamb—
I here by the dust defiled!

While the struggling soul yet stayed
Within thy darkened brain;
While the faintest hope in shadows played,
As thou lingeredst in thy pain;
In the midnight gloom and the midday light,
I watched thee, oh, my son!
And slept not till the world was night
Round thee, my blessed one!

190

Then by thy breathless—cold, cold breast
I laid my head to sleep,
And I found with the dead the only rest
That o'er my heart could creep!
Oh, countless times, that head had hung
In slumber on my bosom—now
My arms around my lost one clung,
And death was on his brow!

Mid sorrows and foes, and chilling throngs,
Though 't was my doom to roam,
My spirit was glad to hear thy songs
Hail thy wronged father home;
My pride, my joy, and the loveliest flower
That here shed the odour of heaven—
The pall of death is on the hour
When thy love to my grief was given.

Thou wilt come no more, with thy soul-lit eye,
Bright brow and pleasant voice—
With thy smile like the starlight of autumn's sky,
And thy step that said ‘rejoice;’
Dayspring and sunset—the springtime bloom,
And the winter's household hearth—
Hues, odours and smiles are in thy tomb,
And why should I roam the earth?

Oh, one is left, on whose natal hour
Thy spirit smiled in bliss,
And there's another in the nuptial bower
That never felt thy kiss;
The first in her soul thine image bears,
And Gertrude's face is thine,
And both, through the lapse of earthly years,
Shall make thy tomb their shrine.

And she, who bore thee, her firstborn pride,
In the bloom of her spring of love,
And she who clasped thee to her side,
And called thee her wreck'd ark's dove,

191

By twilight and daybeam will kneel in prayer
By the grave of my only son,
And the breeze that fans his dust, shall bear
Our love to his heavenly throne!

University of Virginia Library

TO MY SON IN HEAVEN.