There’s a little hair trunk in the attic stored,
Under the rafters packed away;
With a heart nigh broken, a mother’s hands
Tenderly carried it there one day.
The tears fell fast as she closed the lid
On the homely trinkets--you’ll call them so,--
That her baby loved, then with one more kiss
On the little hair trunk, she turned to go.
Now on the lid is the dust of years,--
I wonder what think all the toys within!
Do they wish for the baby voice, still so long,
To arouse them once more with its boyish din?
In the attic I happened to be one day,
I couldn’t help taking a tiny peep,--
They were just as he left them, every one,--
Oh, well, perhaps it was foolish to weep!
A bottle of beans (they were yellow and black);
He called them his “stock,” which he bought and sold;
A “Mother Goose Rhymes”--and his finger prints
Were still on its covers, now ragged and old!
A “Dinah” doll, without any hair,--
All these I found--the others you know,
For perhaps a like little trunk you placed
Under the rafters, too, long ago!