All gone—ah, yes, it is she who has loved, who has lost, and suffered,
She and none other it is, left alone in her sorrow and pain.
Still with its sapless roots, that stay tho' the branches have dropt—
Have withered, and fallen, and gone, their strength and their glory forgotten;
Still with the life that remains, silent, and faithful, and stedfast,
Through sunshine and bending storm clings the oak to its mother-earth.
JOHN CARMAN
I
John Carman of Carmeltown
Worked hard through the livelong day;
He drove his awl and he snapt his thread
And he had but little to say.
He had but little to say
Except to a neighbor's child;
Three summers old she was, and her eyes
Had a look that was deep and wild.
Her hair was heavy and brown
Like clouds in a starry night.
She came and sat by the cobbler's bench
And his soul was filled with delight.
No kith nor kin had he
And he never went gadding about;
A strange, shy man, the people said;
They could not make him out.
