Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/54

16, 1830.]

His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain:

I look’d at the still little body—his trouble had all been in vain.

For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another morn:

But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born.

But he cheer’d me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay:

Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way:

Never jealous—not he; we had many a happy year;

And he died, and I could not weep—my own time seem’d so near.

But I wish’d it had been God’s will that I, too, then could have died:

I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side.

And that was ten years back, or more, if I don’t forget:

But as to the children, Annie, they’re all about me yet.

Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at two,

Patter she goes, my own little Annie, an Annie like you:

Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will,

While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill.

And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too—they sing to their team:

Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of a dream.

They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed—

I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.

And yet I know for a truth, there’s none of them left alive;

For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five:

And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and ten;

I knew them all as babies, and now they’re elderly men.

For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve;

I am oftener sitting at home in my father’s farm at eve:

And the neighbours come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;

I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.

To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad:

But mine is a time of peace, and there is Grace to be had;

And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;

And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of Peace.

And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain,

And happy has been my life; but I would not live it again.

I seem to be tired a little, that’s all, and long for rest;

Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.

So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower;

But how can I weep for Willy, he has but gone for an hour,—

Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;

I, too, shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?

And Willy’s wife has written, she never was overwise.

Get me my glasses, Annie: thank God that I keep my eyes.

There is but a trifle left you, when I shall have past away.

But stay with the old woman now: you cannot have long to stay.