Democrat And Sentinel

Select Poetry.

[From the Missouri Democrat.]

DYING IN THE DARK.

BY CORNIE WILLIAMS LAWS.

See, the lamplight on the window
Flutters down in golden lines,
Pencilling up the rambling hedges,
Pinning jewels on the pines,
Painting now upon my pillow,
Resting from its ribald route,
Falling fainter, fainter, fainter,
God! O! God! the light is out!

Pulsing through the dreary darkness,
Comes the wild and winging wind,
And its restless, weird fingers
Quick the curtains white unbind,
O! 'tis fearful to be lying
With these eyes so glazed and stark,
And to feel that I am dying,
Dying, dying in the dark.

I can hear the rushing river,
And I know that shadowed light,
Weaveth golden gateway over
Each soft wavelet in its flight,
Ah! could but one gleam now reach me,
But one little, tangled gleam,
That has sifted through the lilies,
And is wasting on the stream.

O! in sound of humming voices,
O! in sound of drumming feet,
While each lamplit casement slanteth
Burnished bars across the street,
To be drifting, to be drifting,
In a shrinking, fragile bark,
Towards that gloomy "shoreless ocean,"
Drifting, drifting in the dark.

There's a time-worn way-side cottage,
Hark! there's sobbing at the pane.
Little Daughter! see I'm coming!
Through these shifting sheets of rain,
Weeping on thy little apron,
Sending but thy shadow out,
Over daisy beds to meet me,
In my weary, homeward route.

But my limbs grow numb and trembling,
And I hear a rushing stream,
Is there no one to bear me over?
Pity me, O! God! I dream—
Ah! the tide is going, going,
Ere the trilling of the lark,
Will the silken moorings loosen,
And a boat drift in the dark.