Softly fell the twilight;
In the glowing west
Purple splendors faded;
Birds had gone to rest;
All the winds were sleeping;
One lone whip-poor-will
Made the silence deeper,
Calling from the hill.
Silently, serenely,
From his mother’s knee,
In the gathering darkness,
Still as still could be,
A young child watched the shadows;
Saw the stars come out;
Saw the weird bats flitting
Stealthily about;
Saw across the river
How the furnace glow,
Like a fiery pennant,
Wavered to and fro;
Saw the tall trees standing
Black against the sky,
And the moon’s pale crescent
Swinging far and high.
Deeper grew the darkness;
Darker grew his eyes
As he gazed around him,
In a still surprise.
Then intently listening,
“What is this I hear
All the time, dear mother,
Sounding in my ear?”
“I hear nothing,” said she,
“Earth is hushed and still.”
But he hearkened, hearkened,
With an eager will,
Till at length a quick smile
O’er the child-face broke,
And a kindling lustre
In his dark eyes woke.
“Listen, listen, mother!
For I hear the sound
Of the wheels, the great wheels
That move the world around!”
Oh, ears earth has dulled not!
In your purer sphere,
Strains from ours withholden
Are you wise to hear?
“GOD KNOWS”
Wild and dark was the winter night
When the emigrant ship went down,
But just outside of the harbor bar,
In the sight of the startled town.
The winds howled, and the sea roared,
And never a soul could sleep,
Save the little ones on their mothers’ breasts,
Too young to watch and weep.
No boat could live in the angry surf,
No rope could reach the land:
There were bold, brave hearts upon the shore,
There was many a ready hand—
Women who prayed, and men who strove
When prayers and work were vain;
For the sun rose over the awful void
And the silence of the main.
All day the watchers paced the sands,
All day they scanned the deep,
All night the booming minute-guns
Echoed from steep to steep.
“Give up thy dead, O cruel sea!”
They cried athwart the space;
But only an infant’s fragile form
Escaped from its stern embrace.
Only one little child of all
Who with the ship went down
That night when the happy babies slept
So warm in the sheltered town.
Wrapped in the glow of the morning light,
It lay on the shifting sand,
As fair as a sculptor’s marble dream,
With a shell in its dimpled hand.
There were none to tell of its race or kin.
“God knoweth,” the pastor said,
When the wondering children asked of him
The name of the baby dead.
And so, when they laid it away at last
In the church-yard’s hushed repose,
They raised a stone at the baby’s head,
With the carven words, “God knows.”