Page:Near nature's heart; a volume of verse (IA nearnaturesheart00jack).pdf/71

 This bonny bird has faith to show To faithless mortals, fearing woe, How the changeless One, with a changing light Fore-plans for bird and man aright; With autumn gone and winter here—lo, The Junco comes!

JAMES BRADLEY JACKSON

(Written beside his grave in Lake City, Fla., where he was buried after a tragic death, February 8, 1868, by railroad accident.

Dr. Lovick Pierce, when in his prime, once facetiously remarked to several opposing preachers: "My brethren, you had better let brother Jackson alone. He has the most metaphysical mind of any man in Georgia, myself only excepted."

Rev. W. J. Scott, D. D., in "Biographic Etchings" says of contemporary ministers: "Not one of them was his equal as a theologian or logician."

The late Dr. W. J. Cotter, of Newnan, Ga., wrote: "Your father was a great and good man.")

Father, O my father! Attend unto the cry Of this, thy son, And, though long silent and invisible, Speak thou to me.

I stand with uncovered head, 'Neath giant water oaks, Thy sleepless body-guard, Supporting emblems of eternal mourning, The clinging mosses at half mast, Nature's weepers; Now still, now softly chanting, now waving, While sympathetic zephyrs flow, And give them kiss of comfort as they pass— Calling all, like my hungry heart, For thee!

Victimized thy body, Thy very bones were mangled, Long since done to dust, Exalted dust, once indwelt by Deity, Assuring foretaste of higher life.

In towering oak a mocking-bird doth sing, Not doleful dirge, Nor requiem for the hopeless dead, But sonatas pure sings he of life and love, This receiving and out-giving Psyche of every wandering note, The Sidney Lanier 'mongst birds of the sunny South, His own "trim Shakespeare on a tree"— The oak, the moss, the bird and I, Above all Jehovah, the life of all, Proclaim thee ever-living, And glorified.

I cry unto thee, ascended sire; Hearest thou me? Conscious of thy child's communion?