Alas! and after those long hours of woe,
More woe awaited me when morning came.
Our Haydn’s bed-worn frame, so frail before,
New-rent by throes of passion yesterday,
Once more lay prostrate in the arms of death:
So thought we all: I, ere the fact I heard,
Could feel its cold shade creeping over me.
The shutters closed, the silence everywhere,
The very coffin of our lively home,
The sadden’d looks, the voices all suppress’d,
The kind physician’s face, that wore no smile,—
I did not need to ask the cause of all.
I sought and saw my Haydn. How his face
Gazed forth, a ghost’s, against my sense of guilt!
For I, perhaps, had made his last thought sin;
And I, perhaps, had lured him toward his doom.
I thought then of my father, of the priest,
What they of love had said, of genuine love,
Such love as Christ had had. I ask’d myself
If there was naught that I could sacrifice?