Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lone by the old hearth was the old man sitting.
He, too, a treasure-box had on his knee;
And slowly, slowly, like sad snow-flakes flitting
Down from the weak boughs of a wither'd tree,
Fell from his tremulous fingers, wet with tears,
Into the embers of the old hearth's fire,
Wan leaves of paper yellow'd by long years:
Letters, that once were treasures.

The Grandsire
Welcomed the infant with a kind, faint smile.
The burning letters, black and wrinkled, rose
Along the gusty flue; and there awhile
(Like one who, doubtful of the way he goes,

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Lingers and hesitates) along the dark
They hover'd and delay'd their ghostly flight,
Thin sable veils wherein a restless spark
Yet trembled!—and then pass'd from human sight.

How oft had human eyes in days of yore
Above them beam'd, and with what tender light!
Wherefore, O wherefore, had those eyes no more
Upon them gazed for many a heedless year?
Was not the record which those eyes had read
With such bright rapture in each blissful tear
Still writ in the same letters, which still said
The self-same words? Ah! why not now, as then,
With the same power to brighten those changed eyes?
Why should such looks such letters meet again
As strangers? each to each a sad surprise!
“How pale,” the eyes unto the letters said,
“And wan, and weak, and yellow are ye grown!”
And to the eyes the letters, “Why so red
About the rims, and wrinkled? Eyes unknown,
Nor ever seen before, to us ye seem,
Save for a something in the depths of you
Familiar to us, like a life-like dream
So well remember'd it almost seems true!”

The grandchild weeps upon the grandsire's knee,
And babbles of his treasure fled away.
The old man listens to him patiently,
And tells the child, as tho' great news were they,

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Old tales which well the child already knows,
And smoothes his tumbled curls, and comforts him.
The winter day is darkening to its close.
On the old hearth the dying fire grows dim.