They were clear as the sun in his mild, setting rays; They were pure as the stars, soon to kindle and blaze; But they 're gone! I have lost the dear dream of that sleep, As a bright planet drowned in the vast ether deep.
Yet the face of my mother, through tears as she smiled, When she found, gently raised, and led home her lost child-- I shall see that loved face by time's stream evermore, Till I follow her home, where life's dreamings are o'er.
My flower, thou art as sweet to me. Thy form as full and fair-- As rich a fruit shall follow thee, As if thou hadst denied the bee The pure and precious gift, that he Wafts joyous through the air.
The spices from thy bosom flow As freely round thee now, As if withheld an hour ago. Bestowing, thou canst still bestow; Though, whence thy gifts thou may'st not know, Or giving, tell me how.
And future good, we yet shall find, Was hidden in thy heart; Its witness shall be left behind, When thou like all thy tender kind, Thy minutes summed, shalt be resigned Forever to depart.
Thy ruin I would not forestall; Yet soon, I know, to thee Must come, what happens once to all:-- Thy life will fail, and thou must fall-- Must fade and perish, past recall, To vanish from the tree.
Then, on the bough where thou wast sent To pass thy fleeting days, At work for which thine hours were lent, In silent, balmy, mild content, A rich and shining monument To thee will nature raise.
Now, not in pride--in purpose high, Awhile in beauty shine; And speak, through man's admiring eye, Forbidding every passer by To wish to live, or dare to die With object less than thine.
Visiting at the house of a friend in Boston, I was shown an apple which he told me had been sent to him from Plymouth, and was the fruit of a tree that was planted by Peregrine White, the first child born of Pilgrim parents in New England. I praised the apple for its beauty, and the venerable associations connected with it. He wished me to keep it; but, as he had no other of the tree, I declined the gift.
I wanted the apple, when offered to me By its generous owner, but thought it not right To take it, because it had grown on a tree, That sprang from a seed sown by PEREGRINE WHITE. And he, who thus proffered it, had none beside it; While diffidence checked the words,--"Let us divide it."