The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1879-03-05
A Farmhouse Dirge.

Il thought you would come this morning
ma'am. Yes, Edith at last has gone;
To-morrow's week, aye, just as the sun right
into her window shone;
When with the night, the Vicar says, where
endeth never the day;
Bnt she's left a darkness behind her here l
wish she had taken away.
She is no longer with US, but we seem to be
always with her,
In the lonely bed where we laid her last, and
can't get her to speak or stir.
II.
eyes, Pm at work, tits time I was. 1 should
have begun before;
But this is the room where she lay so still, ere
they carried her past the door,
l thought could never let her go where it
seems so lonely of nights;
But now am scrubbing and busting down,
and setting the place to rights.
All have kept are the flowers there, the last
that stood by her bed.
| suppose l must throw them away. She
looked much fairer when she was dead
Ill
THANK you, for thinking of her so much.
Kind thought is the truest friend.
wish you had seen how pleased she was
with the peaches you used to send.
She tired OF them too ere the end, so she did
with all we tried;
we set them down by her side.
Their bloom and the flush upon her cheek
were alike, used to say;
Both were too smooth and soft, and round,
and both have faded away.
w.
II never could tell you how kind, too, were
the ladies up at the hall;
Every noon, fair or wet, one of them used to
call. 3ssY fs. ....< =. i.
Worry andswd;k seems ours, but yours pleas
ant and easyldays, . = H.. H.
And when AL esIsmooth, the rich and poor
have different lives and ways. ".s
Sorrow and death bring men more close, tits
JOY that puts US apart;
IT'S a comfort to think, though we're severed
so, we're all Of US one at heart.
"She never wished to be smart and rich. as so
many in these days do,
Nor cared to go in on market.days to stare at
the gay and new.
She liked to remain at home and pluck the
White violets down in the wood:
She said to her sisters before she died, Otis so
easy to be good"
She must have found it so, I think, and that
was the reason why.
God deemed it needles to leave her here, so
took her up to the sky.
vi.
''The Vicar says that he knows she is there
and surely she ought to be;
But though I repeat the words, tits hard to
believe what one does not see.
They did not want me to 90 to the grave but
l could not have kept away,
And what ever do ], can only see coffin and
church yard clay,
Yes, know it's wrong to keep lingering there,
and wicked aud weak to fret;
And that's why Pm hard to work again for it
helps one to forget.
VII.
"The yonng ones don't seem to take to work
as their mothers and fathers did.
We never were asked if we liked or no, but
had to obey when bid
There's Bessie won't swill the dairy now, nor
Richard call home the cows
And all of them cry, How can YOU, mother ~
when carry the wash to the sows.
Edith would drudge, for always Death the
hearth of the helpfulest robs.
But she was so pretty could not bear to set
her on dirty jobs!
Il don't know how it'll be with them when
sorrow and loss are theirs,
For it isn't likely that they'll escape their
pack of worrlts and cares.
They say it's an age of progress this, and a
sight of things improves,
But sickness, and age, and bereavement seem
to work in the same old grooves.
Fine they may grow, and that, but Death as
.- lief takes the moth as the grub.
When their dear ones die, suspect they'll
wish they'd floor Of their own to scrub
-A'tstin Dobson, Contemporary Reuie,o.