Not Understood and Other Poems/A Paper from Home

by Thomas Bracken

 

A PAPER FROM HOME.

 

ALONE with his dog, when the night-veil was falling,
  A digger sat dreaming of times that were fled;
For mem’ry was painting old scenes, and recalling
  Dear faces and forms from the realms of the dead.
His fancy renewed the old pictures long faded,
  The sheet in his hand seemed a leaf from life’s tome,
Its paragraphs bright, and its articles shaded—
  He smiled and he sighed o’er that paper from home.

A light-hearted boy he embraced the old people—
  He rushed from the school with his mates to the green;
He climbed up the ivy that wrapp’d the church steeple
  Which stood on the hill to watch over the scene.
He blew from his childish pipe fanciful bubbles;
  He floated his reed on the rivulet’s foam;
The mountain of hope hid the ocean of troubles,
  And fairies danced over that paper from home.

He sat in the dell where the lilac was swinging;
  The thrush and the blackbird were warbling above;
A raven-haired girl to his bosom was clinging;
  Their eyes exchanged draughts from the fountains of love—
Ah! where is the fond one that used to adore him?
  A black cloud crept o’er the ethereal dome;
A crystal pearl dropped on the journal before him,
  And down on the ground fell the paper from home.