64 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
Late Singer of a Sunless Day
LATE singer of a sunless day,
I know not if with pain
Or pleasure more, I hear thy lay
Renew its vernal strain.
As gleams of youth, when youth is o'er
And bare the summer bowers,
Thy song brings back the years of yore,
And unreturning hours.
So was it once 1 So yet again
It never more will be!
Yet sing ; and lend us in thy strain
A moment's youth with thee.
Francis Turner Palgrave
Like Light Through the Window
SILENCE the voice of Christianity and the world is well-nigh dumb,
for gone is that sweet music which kept in order the rulers of the
people, which cheers the poor widow in her lonely toil, and comes like
light through the windows of morning to men who sit stooping and
feeble, with failing eyes and a hungering heart. Theodore Parker
Charles Lamb Sleeps
HERE the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning
which they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked up
and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some
stories about their pretty dead mother.
Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes
in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice ^ and as much
as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens—when suddenly, turning to
Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a
reality of re-presentment that I became in doubt which of them stood
there before me, or whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood
gazing both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding,
and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were
seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely im-
pressed upon me the effects of speech : " We are nothing ; less than
aothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must
wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have
existence, and a name "—and, immediately awaking, I found myself
quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep,
Charles Lamb