(FOR MUSIC.)
"O, let me slumber--let me sleep!"
The fair-haired boy in whispers sighed;
Then sank upon the snowy steep,
While friendly hearts to rouse him tried.
"O, let me sleep!" and as he spake
His weary spirit sought its rest,
And slept, no more again to wake,
Save haply there--among the blest.
Sleep--sleep--sleeping:
He sleeps beneath the starry dome;
And far away his mother, weeping,
Waits his coming home.
We raised him gently from the snow,
And bore him in our arms away.
The sweet white face is smiling now--
Made whiter by the moon's pale ray.
And when the sun in beauty rose
We laid him in the silent tomb,
Where mountains with eternal snows
High up tow'rds Heaven grandly loom.
Sleep--sleep--sleeping:
He sleeps beneath the starry dome;
And far away his mother, weeping,
Waits his coming home. (_a_)
(_a_) The late Artemus Ward, in his "American Drolleries," tells a
pathetic story of a boy, a German, who died from the severity of the
weather, while travelling, in company with others, in the vicinity of
the Rocky Mountains. He was the only child of a widowed mother. The
intense cold induced drowsiness; and while being forced along by his
companions with the view of counteracting the effects of the frost, his
continued cry, uttered with soul-stirring plaintiveness, was: "Let me
sleep--let me sleep." Unable to save him, his companions permitted him
to lie down and "fall asleep in the snow"--a sleep from which he never
woke.