That day, as I remember well, The splashing rain in torrents fell; The pregnant clouds discharged their debt Of moist, apologetic tears, As if in passionate regret For rain withheld in famine years, And from exuberance of grief In drizzling penance found relief; Or, as if tears from unseen eyes Were wafted downward from the skies, In tardy expiation for The carnage of remorseless war: The sorrow of the elements For human woe and violence. The roads which thread the country lanes, Had turned to sheets of liquid mud, As if to cover up the stains Of civil war and human blood. That evening, as a pall of cloud Enveloped nature as a shroud, Bedraggled and dispirited, My footsteps to the old home led: Again I stood before the door I left in wrath, four years before: But what a change! The vandal torch Had long devoured the roof and porch: The gray disintegrating walls Still swayed and tottered in the air, Or lay in heaps within its halls, In melancholy ruin there: The towering chimney, black and tall, Stood, as if mourning o'er its fall: And through the dismal mist and rain, The windows, void of sash and pane, Seemed staring at the gathering night, In wild expression of affright. The fields my infancy had known, With briar and weed were overgrown; The sunlight, heralding the morn, No longer smiled on waving corn. I wandered, aimlessly around, Yet heard not one familiar sound, No stamp of hoof nor flap of wing, No low of cow, nor bleat of sheep, Nor any tame domestic thing; Silence, most horrible and deep. No pony whinnied in its stall, Nor neighed in answer to my call; No purr of cat, nor bark of dog, Naught but the croaking of the frog; No voice of relative or kin, No father paused and stroked his chin, Then rushed with recognizing grasp To hold his son within his clasp; No mother, with her silvered hair, Rocked in the same old rocking chair. First at the ruins, then the ground, I gazed in turn, mechanically, Till, startled by a mournful sound, A piteous and plaintive cry, I turned, and peering through the storm, Discerned the outlines of a form, Bewailing o'er the ruins there In accents of complete despair. I knew her voice, and felt her woe, She was my nurse, poor Aunty Chloe! Between her sobs disconsolate, This freed, but ever faithful slave, Told of my agèd parents' fate, Then led me to the double grave. I, who through four long tragic years, Had never yielded once to tears, Clasping her hand, so kind and true, Wept with the rain, and she wept too. * * * * * Ere daybreak, with increasing light, Evolved from disappearing night The morn, in radiant splendor dressed, I, too, had started for the West."