When the falling waters utter
  Something mournful on their way,
And departing swallows flutter,
  Taking leave of bank and brae;
When the chaffinch idly sitteth
  With her mate upon the sheaves,
And the wistful robin flitteth
  Over beds of yellow leaves;
When the clouds, like ghosts that ponder
  Evil fate, float by and frown,
And the listless wind doth wander
  Up and down, up and down: 
Though the heart be not attending,
  Having sorrows of her own,
Through the fields and fallows wending,
  It is sad to walk alone.

Merton.  Blind! blind! blind! 
Oh! sitting in the dark for evermore,
And doing nothing—­putting out a hand
To feel what lies about me, and to say
Not “This is blue or red,” but “This is cold,
And this the sun is shining on, and this
I know not till they tell its name to me.”

O that I might behold once more my God! 
The shining rulers of the night and day;
Or a star twinkling; or an almond-tree,
Pink with her blossom and alive with bees,
Standing against the azure!  O my sight! 
Lost, and yet living in the sunlit cells
Of memory—­that only lightsome place
Where lingers yet the dayspring of my youth: 
The years of mourning for thy death are long.

Be kind, sweet memory!  O desert me not! 
For oft thou show’st me lucent opal seas,
Fringed with their cocoa-palms and dwarf red crags,
Whereon the placid moon doth “rest her chin”,
For oft by favor of thy visitings
I feel the dimness of an Indian night,
And lo! the sun is coming.  Red as rust
Between the latticed blind his presence burns,
A ruby ladder running up the wall;
And all the dust, printed with pigeons’ feet,
Is reddened, and the crows that stalk anear
Begin to trail for heat their glossy wings,
And the red flowers give back at once the dew,
For night is gone, and day is born so fast,
And is so strong, that, huddled as in flight,
The fleeting darkness paleth to a shade,
And while she calls to sleep and dreams “Come on,”
Suddenly waked, the sleepers rub their eyes,
Which having opened, lo! she is no more.

O misery and mourning!  I have felt—­
Yes, I have felt like some deserted world
That God had done with, and had cast aside
To rock and stagger through the gulfs of space,
He never looking on it any more—­
Untilled, no use, no pleasure, not desired,
Nor lighted on by angels in their flight
From heaven to happier planets, and the race
That once had dwelt on it withdrawn or dead
Could such a world have hope that some blest day
God would remember her, and fashion her
Anew?

Jessie.  What, dearest?  Did you speak to me?

Child.  I think he spoke to us.

M.  No, little elves, You were so quiet that I half forgot Your neighborhood.  What are you doing there?