Above all, lo! the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain and with wondrous clouds; Below too all calm, all vital and beautiful--and the farm prospers well. 10 Down in the fields all prospers well; But now from the fields come, father--come at the daughter’s call; And come to the entry, mother--to the front door come, right away. Fast as she can she hurries--something ominous--her steps trembling; She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap. 15 Open the envelope quickly; Oh this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is signed. Oh a strange hand writes for our dear son--oh stricken mother’s soul! All swims before her eyes--flashes with black--she catches the main words only; Sentences broken--_gunshot wound in the breast_--_cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, 20 At present low, but will soon be better_. Ah! now the single figure to me Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms, Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, By the jamb of a door leans. 25 _Grieve not so, dear mother_ (the just grown daughter speaks through her sobs; The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed). _See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better._ Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor, may be, needs to be better, that brave and simple soul). While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, 30 The only son is dead. But the mother needs to be better; She, with thin form, presently drest in black; By day her meals untouched--then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, 35 Oh, that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life, escape and withdraw To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son. _Walt Whitman._ CCLXXIX _SONNET._ Through the night, through the night, In the saddest unrest, Wrapt in white, all in white, With her babe on her breast, Walks the mother so pale, 5 Staring out on the gale Through the night! Through the night, through the night, Where the sea lifts the wreck, Land in sight, close in sight! 10 On the surf-flooded deck Stands the father so brave, Drawing on to his grave Through the night! _Richard Henry Stoddard._ CCLXXX _A DEDICATION TO CHARLES DICKENS OF THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH._