Henceforth, my gray hairs will grow white, my strength fail. Physically and mentally hurrying on to decay, how long before I shall follow thee? If there is knowledge after death, this separation will be but for a little while. If there is no knowledge after death, so will this sorrow be but for a little while, and then no more sorrow for ever.
Thy boy is just ten; mine five. But if the young and the strong are to be thus cut off, who shall dare hope that these babes in arms may not share the same unhappy fate?
Thy last year’s letters told me of the tender foot and its increasing pains; but I said to myself, “The disease is common in Kiangnan, and need cause no alarm.” Was it then this that extinguished thy life, or some other disease that brought thee to the grave?
Thy last letter is dated 17th of the 6th moon. Yet I hear from one that death came on the 2nd, while another sends a letter without date. The messenger never thought to ask; and the family, relying on the letter’s date, never thought to tell. I enquired of the messenger, but he replied at random, so that I am still in doubt. I have now sent to sacrifice to thy departed spirit, and to condole with thy orphan and foster-mother, bidding them wait, if possible, until the final rites are paid, but if not, then to come to me, leaving the servants to watch over thy corpse. And when perchance I am able, I will some day see that thy bones are duly laid in our ancestral burying-place.
Alas! of thy sickness I knew not the time; of thy death I knew not the hour. Unable to tend thee in life, I was debarred from weeping over thee in death. I could not touch thy bier: I could not stand by thy grave. I have sinned against Heaven: I have caused thee to be cut off in thy prime. Wretch that I am, separated from thee alike in life and death―thou at one end of the earth, I at the other―thy shadow did not accompany my form, neither shall thy spirit now blend with my dreams. The fault, the blame are mine alone.
O ye blue heavens, when shall my sorrow have end? Henceforth, the world has no charms. I will get me a few acres on the
