XXII. 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. XXIII. 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 neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I; I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by. XXIV. 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. XXV. 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. XXVI. 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? XXVII. And Willy's wife has written, she never was over wise. 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. SEA DREAMS. AN IDYL. A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred; Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea; And that one unctuous mouth which lured him, rogue, To buy wild shares in some Peruvian mine. All sand, and cliff, and deep inrunning cave, Not preaching simple Christ to simple men, Then comes the close." The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world; He at his own: but when the wordy storm Had ended, forth they moved and paced the sand, the sea. And rosed in the east: then homeward and to bed: Where she, that kept a tender Christian hope Returning, as the bird returns, at night, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath," Said, "Love, forgive him :" but he did not speak: Then all in silence for an hour she lay, Remembering our dear Lord who died for all, And musing on the little lives of men, And how they mar that little with their feuds. But after these were sleeping, a full tide Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam, and fell Dead claps of thunder from within the cliffs Their little Margaret, cradled near them, made The mother, and the father suddenly cried, "A wreck, a wreck!" then turn'd, and groaning said: "Forgive! How many will say, 'Forgive,' and find A sort of absolution in the sound To hate a little longer! No; the sin It is not true that second thoughts are best, "Not fearful; fair," "O yes," he said, "I dream'd Of such a tide swelling toward the land, 6 Larger and larger. What a world,' I thought, "That was then your dream," she said; "Not sad, but sweet." "So sweet, I lay," said he, "And mused upon it, drifting up the stream In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced The broken vision; for I dream'd that still The motion of the great deep bore me on, And that the woman walk'd upon the brink: I wonder❜d at her strength, and ask'd her of it: 'It came,' she said, 'by working in the mines:' Oh, then, to ask her of my shares, I thought;" And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head. And then the motion of the current ceas'd, And there was rolling thunder; and we reach'd A mountain, like a wall of burs and thorns; But she, with her strong feet, up the steep hill Trod out a path; I follow'd; and at top She pointed seaward: there a fleet of glass, That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me, Sailing along before a gloomy cloud |