Poems (Truesdell)/Little Willie

by Helen Truesdell

LITTLE WILLIE.

Attend, gentle children, to you I will tell
The story of one whom you knew and loved well;
'T is not long since his voice 'mid the gayest was heard,
Warbling forth gentle strains like some sweet forest bird.

But that soft voice is hushed, and that bright eye of blue
Has closed on the things all so dark and untrue,
On the waves of the world he will never be tossed,
Then why should you weep for the loved and the lost?

Then list, O ye parents! say, can you not hear
The voice of your loved one, in strains soft and clear?
Even now he is singing his sweet lay of love,
With the saints and the angels in triumph above.

'Tis thus, ever thus, earthly hopes must decay—
The fairest of flowers the first fade away,
The friends we love best will the soonest depart,
Though their memory is written with tears on our heart.

I could weep when I think of those joys that are past,
I could weep when I think that those joys could not last,
But hope sends a vision that's gentle and fair,
And bids me look upward and cease to despair.

It speaks of that radiant city above,
Where friends dwell forever in concord and love;
No sickness, no sighing, no tears dim the eye,
In our Father's blest mansions prepared up on high.