Children Gone
Some are from infancy light and happy—they romp, they fly. You can hear their swift feet in the hall. Their loud laughter rings through the house, or in the woods bursts into a score of echoes.
At night you can hardly hush their glad hearts for slumber, and in the morning they wake you with their singing. Alas! if then they leave you, and you no more hear their swift feet in the hall, and their loud laughter through the house, or in the woods bursting into a score of echoes; if they wake you no more in the morning with their sweet song; if the color go out of the rose and the leaves fall; if angels for once grow jealous, and want what you cannot spare; if packed away in the trunk or drawer there be silent garments that once.
fluttered with youthful life, and by mistake you call some other child by the name of the one departed—ah me! ah me! —TALMAGE.
