Page:Sentimental reciter.pdf/8

 There was one who died

In that day’s glory, whose obscurer name

No proud historian’s page will chronicle.

Peace to his honest soul!I read his name,

’Twas in the list of slaughter, and blest God

The sound was not familiar to mine ear.

But it was told me after that this man

Was one whom lawful violence had forced

From his own home, and wife and little ones,

Who by his labour lived; that he was one

Whose uncorrupted heart could keenly feel

A husband’s love ; a father’s anxiousness;

That, from the wages of his toil, he fed

The distant dear ones, and would talk of them

At midnight when he trod the silent deck

With him he valued—talk of them, of joys

Which he had known—oh, God! and of the hour

When they should meet again, till his full heart,

His manly heart, at last would overflow

Even like a child’s with very tenderness.

Peace to his honest spirit! the ball

Of death came suddenly, and shatter’d him,

And left no moment’s agonizing thought

On those he loved so well.

He ocean deep

Now lies at rest. Be Thou her comforter

Who art the widow’s friend!Man does not know

What a cold sickness made her blood run back,

When first she heard the tidings of the fight;

Man does not know with what a dreadful hope

She listen’d to the names of those who died;

Man does not know, or knowing, will not heed,

With what an agony of tenderness

She gazed upon her children, and beheld

His image who was gone.Oh, God! be thou

Who art the widow’s friend, her comforter!

Ye crags and peaks, I’m with you once again!

I hold to you the hands you first beheld,

To show they still are free.Methinks I hear

A spirit in your echoes answer me,

And bid your tenant welcome to his home

Again!—O sacred forms, how proud you look!