Chapter LVII

And two months after that I saw them wed,
My Haydn and Doretta, in the church.
And, since then, I have pray’d for him long days,
And longer nights; and I have oft had hopes
That my faint life new strength would gain from God.
But now so white, so thin, my body seems,
With scarce enough of substance left in it
To be a ghost;—ah, what if, like a ghost,
It soon should vanish?
So I thought, to-night,
If I could tell you this, confess my fault,
Unload my heart of all her sweet, sad love,
That God might give me rest. I did not, nay,
I did not mean it, to excite myself.
They told me it might bring my death; but oh!
Have I not borne enough to merit life?
How had I counted all these weeks and days,
Up to the hour we two should meet again,
And I should find how all my prayers were heard,
And heaven had made my Haydn blest!—
He came,
Last week: and what, what, think you, can it mean?—
He brought the wilted stems.—
I do not know.
I only know that I can earn no rest:
And all our household so much else have earn’d.
And now how can I?—I can try no more;
But all my pathway has been block’d for me.
They say such words are infidelity,—
O Christ!—yet I can try no more.
Hark! hark!—
Is not that Haydn’s hymn we hear again?—
How faint it sounds!—or I, I faint may be.
The window—move me. There—look out—those clouds—
The sunset?—Ah, what comes on earth so bright,
So beautiful as clouds?—There were no clouds
Where one could always look and see the heaven.
The music, hear it—hear how sweet!—Say, say,
Did I sing then?—Not so?—and only dream’d?—
I thought that music mine, and then myself;
And Haydn’s heart, it beat here, beat in me,—
Ah me, so tired!—Yes, let me rest on you.
O God, for but one hour to live!—For what?
Have I not loved then?—Yes, and tell him so,
Tell Haydn; thank him.—God, praise Him for it.
Life, life—I did not know it—has been sweet.—
Hark! music!—Does it not come from above?

SKETCHES IN SONG.

_Third Edition, Revised._

SKETCHES IN SONG.

A FISH STORY

FOR THE LITTLE CRITICS.

A strange fish came from an inland home
On a journey down to the sea.
He split the ripples, and ript the foam,
And danced and dived in glee.
“Ho, ho!” cried the fry where the sea grew near,
“Hurrah for a fresh-water fool!
One gulp of our salt when he comes out here
Will send him back to his pool.”

The fish was fleet, but the bar was high,
And the low tide roil’d and dim;
And he groped, as he slowly pass’d the fry,
And to and fro would swim.
“Ho, ho!” cried they, as they shook their scales,
“The muddled one misses his way!”
And they fann’d their fins, and slash’d their tails—
“Aha, he here will stay!”

The fish paused not till the way grew clear;
Then launch’d out under the spray;
And shower’d his fins in a white-cap near
That rivall’d the rays of the day.
“Ho, ho, showing off to the sharks!” cried the fry;
“And look—a gull on the shoal.
Yon surface-shiner would better be shy;
The bird will swallow him whole.”

The fish pass’d on, till the sea grew deep,
Then, plunging down through the blue,
A flash came back from a parting leap,
As at last he sank from view.
“Ho, ho,” cried the fry, “we can all do that,
If we only go out with the tide.”
But the tide had gone, so, left on the flat,
They fried in the sun, and died.

UNVEILING THE MONUMENT.

I.

The monument stands, no longer the care
Of mallet and chisel and plummet and square.
With a flourish of trumpets and rolling of drums
The glad hour comes
When the statue above it will loom unveil’d.
Lo, now the crowds that are under it sway;
The bugles are sounding; and look!—away
The veil is dropt!—and afar is hail’d,
With wild huzzas and hands that fly,
The form of the man that stands on high.

II.

How the crowd are cheering! but, ah, their cheer
Recalls a day
When few were here;
And the most of them daintily shrank away,
Afraid a foot or a frill to smear
In the mire of this place, while deep in the clay
The soil was dug for the monument here.