The heroes of old, My own particular place, I always say. With half his body rushing from the wall, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's Eating the figure of a prostrate man— (To the right, it is, of entry by the door) — An ominous sign to one baptized like me, Married, and to be buried there, I hope. And they should add, to have my life complete, -- He is a boy and Gaetan by name- 30 Baptized me: he remembers my whole life As I do his gray hair. How happy those are who know how to write! Such could write what their son should read in time, Had they a whole day to live out like me. -nor any mother left, 90 Out of the little two weeks that she lived, Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps, grow, Tired out by this time, saints! - see my own five Should in a husband have a husband now, Find nothing, this time, but was what it seemed, All truth and no confusion any more. I know she meant all good to me, all pain To herself, since how could it be aught but pain To give me up, so, from her very breast, The wilding flower-tree-branch that, all those years, She had got used to feel for and find fixed? She meant well: has it been so ill i' the main? 340 That is but fair to ask: one cannot judge Of what has been the ill or well of life, The day that one is dying, — sorrows change Into not altogether sorrow-like; I do see strangeness but scarce misery, pain. |