To Olinthus Gregory On Hearing Of The Death Of His Eldest Son Who Was Drowned As He Was Returning

IS there a spot where Pity's foot,

Although unsandalled, fears to tread,

A silence where her voice is mute,

Where tears, and only tears, are shed?

It is the desolated

Where Hope was yet a recent guest,

Where Hope again may never come,

Or come, and only speak of rest.

They gave my hand the pictured scroll,

And bade me only fancy thereA parent's agony of soul,

A parent's long and last despair;

The sunshine on the sudden wave,

Which closed above the youthful head,

Mocking the green and quiet grave,

Which waits the time-appointed dead.

I thought upon the lone fire-side,

Begirt with all familiar thought,

The future, where a father's

So much from present promise wrought:

The sweet anxiety of fears,

Anxious from love's excess alone,

The fond reliance upon

More precious to us than our own:

All past—then weeping words there

From out a still and darkened room,

They could not bear to name a

Written so newly on the tomb.

They said he was so good and kind,

The voices sank, the eyes grew dim;

So much of love he left behind,

So much of life had died with him.

Ah, pity for the long beloved,

Ah, pity for the early dead;

The young, the promising,

Ere life a light or leaf had shed.

Nay, rather pity those whose

It is to wait and weep behind,

The father, who within the

Sees all life held most dear enshrined.