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THE POST OF HONOR.
3
First, at your summons, with averted eye,
I felt the breeze that swept my pennant by;
I heard your echoes gathering on the shore,
As then I launched one childish pebble more;—
Still the old echoes linger in my brain,
And all those voices seem to live again,
As now I come, with more than boyhood's fears,
To mark the dial of our added years.
O, more than favored, could I meet to-day
The smiles that cheered my dim and faltering way;
O, more than blest, could I recall to-night
Those welcome forms that met my dazzled sight;
All the dear faces, all the buried past,
Too bright and brief, too beautiful to last.
I felt the breeze that swept my pennant by;
I heard your echoes gathering on the shore,
As then I launched one childish pebble more;—
Still the old echoes linger in my brain,
And all those voices seem to live again,
As now I come, with more than boyhood's fears,
To mark the dial of our added years.
O, more than favored, could I meet to-day
The smiles that cheered my dim and faltering way;
O, more than blest, could I recall to-night
Those welcome forms that met my dazzled sight;
All the dear faces, all the buried past,
Too bright and brief, too beautiful to last.
Our vanished years! let Memory's muffled bell
Toll but one requiem, and but one farewell,
For him whose eyelids in a wintry grave3
Were closed in anguish by the icy wave.
Rest, early friend, bemoaned in life's young bloom,
Gone, like a shadow, to the voiceless tomb.
Toll but one requiem, and but one farewell,
For him whose eyelids in a wintry grave3
Were closed in anguish by the icy wave.
Rest, early friend, bemoaned in life's young bloom,
Gone, like a shadow, to the voiceless tomb.
