That word I might not dare to speak: A father's sorrow o'er his child So sacred seems and undefiled, To bid it cease we may not seek.
Thy little boy has passed away From mortal sight and mortal love, To join the shining choir above And dwell amid the perfect day;
All robed in spotless innocence, And fittest for celestial things, O'ershadowed by her rustling wings The angel softly led him hence:
As pure as if the gentle rain Of his baptismal morn had sought His bosom's depths, and e'ery thought Had sweetly cleansed from earthly stain:
Such blest assurance brings, I know, To bleeding hearts but sad relief-- The dark and troubled tide of grief _Must_ have its ebb and flow--
And most of all when thou dost plod, _Alone_, upon these wintry days, Along the old familiar ways Wherein _his_ little feet have trod.
And thou dost treasure up his words, The fragments of his earnest talk, On some remembered morning walk, When, at the song of earliest birds,
He'd ask of thee, with charméd look, And smile upon his features spread, Whose careful hand the birds had fed, And filled the ever-running brook?
Or viewing, from the distant glade, The dim horizon round his home, With simplest speech and air would come And ask why were the mountains made?
Be strong, my friend, these days of doom Are but the threads of darkest hue, That daily enter to renew The warp of the Eternal Loom.
And when to us it shall be given In joy _to see the other side_ These threads the brightest shall abide In the fair tapestries of Heaven!
Whatever may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the Parson's, charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant boy to go and ask pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration. And, to Mrs. Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his lessons at school; nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his mother's holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly; and the Parson thought it better to temporize as to the more unpalatable demand. Unluckily Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized. Though Stirn at first kept his own counsel, the Tinker blabbed the whole affair. And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn told his story, as the Tinker had told his own; both tales were very unfavorable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern boy had broken the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain; the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out the misdemeanors of his equals; therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded pattern boy and baffled spy, could expect no mercy;--he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.