He had laid his childish spelling-book and learned To chirp and peck the letters from her mouth, As young birds must. ‘Well done,’ she murmured then, She will not say it now more wonderingly; And yet the last ‘Well done’ will touch him more, As catching up to-day and yesterday In a perfect chord of love; and so, Mark Gage. I envy you your mother!—and you, Graham, Because you have a wife who loves you so, She half forgets, at moments, to be proud Of being Graham’s wife, until a friend observes, ‘The boy here, has his father’s massive brow, Done small in wax ... if we push back the curls.’ Who loves _me_? Dearest father,—mother sweet,— I speak the names out sometimes by myself, And make the silence shiver: they sound strange, As Hindostanee to an Ind-born man Accustomed many years to English speech; Or lovely poet-words grown obsolete, Which will not leave off singing. Up in heaven I have my father,—with my mother’s face Beside him in a blotch of heavenly light; No more for earth’s familiar, household use, No more! The best verse written by this hand, Can never reach them where they sit, to seem Well-done to _them_. Death quite unfellows us, Sets dreadful odds betwixt the live and dead, And makes us part as those at Babel did, Through sudden ignorance of a common tongue. A living Cæsar would not dare to play At bowls, with such as my dead father is. And yet, this may be less so than appears, This change and separation. Sparrows five For just two farthings, and God cares for each. If God is not too great for little cares, Is any creature, because gone to God? I’ve seen some men, veracious, nowise mad, Who have thought or dreamed, declared and testified, They’ve heard the Dead a-ticking like a clock Which strikes the hours of the eternities, Beside them, with their natural ears,—and known That human spirits feel the human way, And hate the unreasoning awe which waves them off From possible communion. It may be. At least, earth separates as well as heaven. For instance, I have not seen Romney Leigh Full eighteen months ... add six, you get two years. They say he’s very busy with good works,— Has parted Leigh Hall into almshouses. He made an almshouse of his heart one day, Which ever since is loose upon the latch For those who pull the string.—I never did.