C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
John Pierpont (1785–1866)
My Child
I
His fair sunshiny head
Is ever bounding round my study chair;
Yet when my eyes, now dim
With tears, I turn to him,
The vision vanishes—he is not there!
And through the open door
I hear a footfall on the chamber stair:
I’m stepping toward the hall
To give the boy a call;
And then bethink me that—he is not there.
A satchel’d lad I meet,
With the same beaming eyes and colored hair;
And as he’s running by,
Follow him with my eye,
Scarcely believing that—he is not there!
When passing by the bed,
So long watched over with parental care,
My spirit and my eye
Seek him inquiringly,
Before the thought comes that—he is not there!
Of day, from sleep I wake,
With my first breathing of the morning air
My soul goes up, with joy,
To Him who gave my boy:
Then comes the sad thought that—he is not there!
Before we seek repose,
I’m with his mother, offering up our prayer,
Whate’er I may be saying,
I am in spirit praying
For our boy’s spirit, though—he is not there!
He lives; nor to the last,
Of seeing him again will I despair:
In dreams I see him now;
And on his angel brow
I see it written—“Thou shalt see me there!”
F
So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear,
That in the spirit land,
Meeting at thy right hand,
’Twill be our heaven to find that—he is there!