Page:Poems David.djvu/15

And as his face by summer breeze is fanned,
He sits with this her Bible in his hand.

And days pass on,—the ship is homeward bound:
He longs once more to touch the sacred ground
Of England, his home, his own native land;
Once more to feel that fond and dear embrace;
Once more to press his lips to that fond face,—
But oh! such joy for him can never be,
His mother's face he never more shall see!
"Mother," he cries, "the clouds drive fast to-night;
No star is there in all the heavens to light
The gathering gloom." The mother kneels in prayer—
To Him the God of storms—and prays that He
Will guard her only one upon the sea.
Down to the beach the rough waves pour
Their noisy flood with loud and deafening roar;
The wild sea birds scream to the fitful gale,
And the winds re-echo the ceaseless wail!
At length is heard the sound of a minute gun,
And the mother thinks of her only son—
With a piercing scream, from her prayer-bent knee
She starts and cries "O God!—a gun at sea."
With frantic haste down to the shore she speeds,
And there at once her greatest sorrow reads.