To One in Affliction

By John R. Thompson.

Dear friend! if word of mine could seal
The bitter fount of all thy tears,
And, through the future's cloudy years,
Some glimpse of sunshine yet reveal—

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!

From Blackwood's Magazine