Cuckoo songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

Within your house that's widowed Love's nest is bitter cold,
Love goes with drooping pinions, his pulses slow and old;
Your baby cries all night long for you he never knew,
The dust is over all things: the grave dust over you.

Drear day and night go over and yet you never come,
To all that lonely weeping so obdurate and dumb.
'Twere liker you to hasten, putting the glory by,
To kiss your love's cold forehead and still your baby's cry.

'Twere liker you'd come stealing, a little ghost in white,
To rock a tiny cradle all in the hushed moonlight,
To whisper to a sleeper till he should dream and wake,
And find the strange new comfort and lose the old heart-break.

With you the years go over fleeter than words can say,
And one shall lose her lover but the half-length of a day;
And one shall lose her baby but 'twixt a sleep and sleep.
The dead are glad in Heaven, the living 'tis that weep.