The Wanderer From The Fold

How few, of all the hearts that loved,

Are grieving for thee now;

And why should mine to-night be

With such a sense of woe?

Too often thus, when left alone,

Where none my thoughts can see,

Comes back a word, a passing

From thy strange history.

Sometimes I seem to see thee rise,

A glorious child again;

All virtues beaming from thine

That ever honoured men:

Courage and truth, a generous

Where sinless sunshine lay:

A being whose very presence

Like gladsome summer-day.

O, fairly spread thy early sail,

And fresh, and pure, and free,

Was the first impulse of the

Which urged life's wave for thee!

Why did the pilot, too confiding,

Dream o'er that ocean's foam,

And trust in Pleasure's careless

To bring his vessel home?

For well he knew what dangers frowned,

What mists would gather, dim;

What rocks and shelves, and sands lay

Between his port and him.

The very brightness of the

The splendour of the main,

The wind which bore him wildly

Should not have warned in vain.

An anxious gazer from the shore—I marked the whitening wave,

And wept above thy fate the

Because—I could not save.

It recks not now, when all is over:

But yet my heart will beA mourner still, though friend and

Have both forgotten thee!