In the absence of a historical internet source, the text for this first poem has been transcribed from F. J. Sypher. This is for completeness’ sake: hopefully, in the future, a contemporary source will become readily available.
THE SAILOR
He was their last and their only child,
But one remaining of many;
And is not the blossom the last on the bough
The most beloved of any?
They brought him up ’mid the mountain and flood,
Till the spirit of sickness was banish’d,
And the roses of health laugh’d on the cheek,
Whose hectic bloom had vanish’d.
And chiefly is was the boy’s delight
To make ships of slips of willow;
And then he would call the lake a sea,
And the rippling wave a billow.
And he loved, on the long and winter’s night,
To read each gallant story,
How the brave had raised the blood-red flag,
And died for their country’s glory;
And how some had sailed to stranger climes,
With but sea and sky before them,
Till the God, whose marvels they’d seen, saw fit
To their native land to restore them.
His mother wept, but his heart was fix’d
On a sailor’s life of danger;—
He envied the wind, for it could be
O’er the wild sea-waves a ranger!
She blest him beside his father’s grave,
And the setting sun shone o’er him.
His lighted brow seemed an augury
Of the life that lay before him.
Oh, hope is catching—she found it so,
And her mother’s grief, concealing;
While he was still by her side, she felt
The glow of her sailor’s feeling.
But when he went, and she saw him turn,
And gaze on the home he was leaving,
What bitter tears wash’d away the web
The fairy hope had been weaving.
That night she sat down to her lonely meal
