Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fraser’s Magazine, 1830/The Youngest
Fraser’s Magazine, June, 1830, page 606
THE YOUNGEST.
The voice of the mourner is heard on the air,
And the old hall is darkened as midnight were there,
And the foot-falls are soft, as they feared to awake
The sleep they would yet give the wide world to break.
Their youngest, their dearest, is gone to his rest,
With health on his brow, and with joy in his breast;
The morning he bounded all life o'er the hill,
At night the light step and the glad pulse were still.
His mother put back the bright curls from his brow,
And kissed in her pride the white forehead below:
But the damps on that forehead were gathering fast,
She kissed them away, but that kiss was her last.
There are others, his elders, the bold and the fair,
But they wear not the likeness that he wont to wear,
With his hair of light gold, his eyes of deep blue;
They bring not the father, who perished, to view.
With his hawk on his hand, his hound at his feet,
With flowers strewed o'er him the wild and the sweet,
He lies that short space before beauty is gone,
When life and when death are commingled in one.
By turns his bold brothers have over him hung,
And wept as they gazed on their favourite, their young;
But his mother sat by like a statue, no tears
Relieving the grief that with them disappears.
Again that dark hall will be opened to day,
And the hymn, and the pall, and the flowers put away;
And, alone in their chapel, the boy will be laid,
And left, as the dead are, to silence and shade.
But long will he be to their memory dear—
Long his glad voice will sound like a dream in their ear:
They will miss their boy-hunter from banquet and chase,
And his place, though filled up, be a still vacant place.
L. E. L.