Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Rememberest thou our days of childish mirth,
And how we sported on the nursery floor,
And read wild fairy tales of knightly worth,
Or shuddered at the giant's fabled roar?
Infants we were, and orphaned of our mother,
And all our thoughts were centred in each other.

And one there was, O thou rememberest well,
Who watched the promise of the opening hours,
With love surpassing all that words may tell,
And gentle force of concentrated power;
She loved us, toiled for us, for us she prayed,
Her sweet affection was our childhood's aid.

And O rememberest thou the fern-clad hills,
The pleasant rambles 'neath the setting sun,
The clear-voiced music of the crystal rills,
And sweet home-greetings when the day was done
At that dear Vicarage where our time was spent
In joy unmixed and blameless merriment?

Said I unmixed? and what is given to man
Of painless joy, what rose without a thorn?
“Whoso hath sinned” (so runs the unchanging ban
On Adam laid) “by him must grief be borne;”
Earth's dearest joys with sorrows are combined,
The saints' white robe with blood incarnadined.

And we have felt it all;—that mountain home,
Our childhood's glory, now is ours no more,
Through those dear haunts the stranger's footsteps roam,
The spell is broken, and the dream is o'er;
There, where of old we came to worship God,
Are laid our loved ones 'neath the flowery sod.

The dream is o'er; we are not children now,
The dawn of Reason, and the burst of Life,
Opinion's force, Imagination's glow,
The gift of choice, the fearfulness of Strife,
All are upon us, and the dizzied mind
Gropes darkly for the truth it cannot find.

Pray we of Christ a nobler dream to send,
A second spring of renovated youth,
Strong as the eagle's; till our flight ascend
The stormy spheres and touch the living Truth.
To whom on earth a childlike heart is given
The children's home is there, once more in heaven.