THE BROKEN HOUSEHOLD.
Reading edition
———
BY MISS ALICE CAREY.
———
Vainly, vainly, memory seeks
Round our father’s knee,
Laughing eyes and rosy cheeks
Where they used to be:
Of the circle once so wide,
Three are wanderers, three have died.
Golden-haired and dewy-eyed,
Prattling all the day,
Was the baby, first that died;
O ’twas hard to lay
Dimpled hand and cheek of snow
In the grave so dark and low!
Smiling back on all who smiled,
Ne’er by sorrow thralled,
Half a woman, half a child,
Was the next God called:
Then a grave more deep and wide
Made they by the baby’s side.
When or where the other died
Only heaven can tell;
Treading manhood’s path of pride
Was he when he fell:
Haply thistles, blue and red,
Bloom about his lonesome bed.
I am for the living three
Only left to pray;
Two are on the stormy sea.
Farther still than they,
Wanders one, his young heart dim,
Oftenest, most, I pray for him.
Whatsoe’er they do or dare,
Wheresoe’er they roam,
Have them, Father, in thy care,
Guide them safely home;
Home, O Father, in the sky,
Where none wander and none die.