 | Areytos or songs and ballads of the South |  |
BALLAD.—COME, LET US DISCOURSE.
I.
Come, let us discourse of our sorrow,The gloom, and the grave, and the night,
For what shall be our waking to-morrow,
When the loved one no more lies in sight?
When he answers no more to the loving call,
And pleads no more to the loving ear,
And stark and cold 'neath his desolate pall,
Nor feels our groan, nor sees our tear?
365
II.
Oh, wail, wail!—nothing but wail!—Words are a mock, since prayer is vain;
The shriek and the moan must tell the tale
Of our life-long wo, and his mortal pain!—
How, in his agony, panting, wild,
Raging with thirst, yet still denied,
We watch'd the face of the dying child,
With hearts death-stricken before he died!
III.
The boy of a thousand loving ways,So true, so innocent, fond and sweet,
What had he done, that his fair young days
Should close so soon in the winding sheet?
What had he done, that the mortal pain
Should fasten its fangs on his pure young life,
While the gasping cry, and the raving brain,
Show'd the agony sharp of the deadly strife!
IV.
Oh, wail, wail!—nothing but wail,Can speak for the pangs of that mortal blow:
The shriek can but feebly tell the tale
Of the pain he bore and the grief we know!
Vex us no more with the idle strain
That bids us find solace in agonies o'er;
Teaches that prayer and care are vain,
That the angel we've lost we shall see no more!
V.
Know we not this? And because we know,Is the groan, the moan, and the wailing cry;
It is not forbid that we feel the wo,
And cry aloud to the far-off sky!
366
To feel that thy innocent life on earth
Hath found thee a passport beyond the sun,
In the blesséd sphere where thy soul had birth.
VI.
Yet, wo, my spirit! What else but woAt thy pangs, my boy, though they now be o'er?
'Tis something to soften the griefs we know,
That thy fair young form shall have pain no more;
Yet, oh, the silence, so deep and drear,
Dreadest of voices, that speak of doom,
And mournfully echo the cry: “Oh, where?”
As wistful I wander from room to room.
| Areytos or songs and ballads of the South | |