Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/19

Rh "Father, in early infancy,

When you were far beyond the sea,

Such thoughts were tyrants over me!

I often sat, for hours together,

Through the long nights of angry weather,

Raised on my pillow, to descry

The dim moon struggling in the sky;

Or, with strained ear, to catch the shock,

Of rock with wave, and wave with rock;

So would I fearful vigil keep,

And, all for listening, never sleep.

But this world's life has much to dread,

Not so, my Father, with the dead.

"Oh! not for them, should we despair,

The grave is drear, but they are not there;

Their dust is mingled with the sod,

Their happy souls are gone to God!

You told me this, and yet you sigh,

And murmur that your friends must die.

Ah! my dear father, tell me why?

For, if your former words were true,

How useless would such sorrow be;

As wise, to mourn the seed which grew

Unnoticed on its parent tree,

Because it fell in fertile earth,

And sprang up to a glorious birth—

Struck deep its root, and lifted high

Its green boughs in the breezy sky.