Faith and Despondency
'The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come
close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And,
while the night is gathering grey,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;--
'Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November's
gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to
wave my daughter's hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance
from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek so softly pressed,
In
happy quiet on my breast.
'But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings
bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire's cheerful glow,
I
think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where
evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie
those that I have loved of old.
And my heart aches, in hopeless pain
Exhausted
with repinings vain,
That I shall greet them ne'er again!'
'Father, in early infancy,
When you were
far beyond the sea,
Such thoughts were tyrant 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.
'But, I'll not fear, I will not weep
For
those whose bodies rest in sleep,--
I know there is a blessed shore,
Opening
its ports for me, and mine;
And, gazing Time's wide waters o'er,
I
weary for that land divine,
Where we were born, where you and I
Shall
meet our Dearest, when we die;
From suffering and corruption free,
Restored
into the Deity.'
'Well hast thou spoken, sweet, trustful child!
And
wiser than thy sire;
And worldly tempests, raging wild,
Shall strengthen
thy desire--
Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam,
Through wind
and ocean's roar,
To reach, at last, the eternal home,
The steadfast,
changeless, shore!'