Poems (Hale)/Echo

by Mary Whitwell Hale

For works with similar titles, see Echo.

ECHO.

 

"I came to the place of my birth, and said, 'The friends of my childhood, where are they?' and echo answered, 'Where are they?'"

The many voices of the past,
 How fall their strains upon the ear?
Come they a spell of grief to cast,
 Or with their tones the heart to cheer?
We hear them in the mighty wind,
 That roars in mournful cadence round;
And sometimes, too, the heart may find
 Breathed on the ear a softer sound.

The voices from our childhood's home,
 Oh! are they noiseless all, and still?
Who there in changeless truth still roam?
 Who yet their wonted stations fill?
They come amid the shades of night,—
 The loved, the cherished "household band,"
And bursting on the mental sight,
 In long and hushed array, they stand.

The father's step is moving there;
 The mother's look of love is given,
True, true, as when her early prayer
 First for her child, was raised to Heaven.
And other forms are gliding by,
 Who shared my childhood's hopes and fears.
The sister's smile, the sister's eye,
 Unchanged amid the lapse of years.

Brother! thy well-known form I see;
 I gaze on thine unaltered brow.
Thou! who wast friend and guide to me,
 Would I might share thy guidance now.
There is a gentler one, whose love
 Might well have cheered life's trial way.
She comes with eye upraised above,
 To point me to a brighter day.

But they are silent all;—they come
 From the far regions of the blest.
Their souls have left the loved home dumb,
 And lone and sad this aching breast.
And now has fled that sacred band.
 Where now do these blest spirits stray?
Alone upon the earth I stand,
 And echo answers, "Where are they"

Where are they? Does no gentler voice,
 Save that of echo, cheer the heart?
No tone that bids the soul rejoice,
 And sad and anxious thoughts depart?
Hark! hark! within the midnight gloom,
 When solitude and grief are near,—
Hark! from beyond the silent tomb,
 A voice is breathed upon the ear.

List to the swell of that pure tone.
 "Though here thy weary footsteps roam,
Thou art not all unblest, alone,
 God soon shall call the wanderer home.
We see the tear, we hear the sigh,
 To thee our changeless love 1s given.
Thy "household band" in faith is nigh,
 And thy best land,—thy home—is heaven."