The Fairfield Herald

Selected Poetry

TO MY MOTHER

BY REV. EDEN R. LATTA.

I know thou art safe in the mansion of peace
Thy gracious Redeemer has given:
Then why should I weep at thy spirit's release,
Since thou art accepted in heaven?

Thou hast left us, and gone to thy dwelling above,
Where sorrow and grief can not come;
Thou hast sought and obtained a bright mansion of love,
And angels have welcomed thee home.

Thou art gone to that land where they need not the sun
To banish the shades of the night;
Where God, the all-seeing, omnipotent one,
Is the life, and the light, and the light.

"And there is no night there," for darkness and gloom
Can not enter that far-away sphere,
Where daybeams celestial forever illume,
And summer encircles the year.

I never beheld thee, dear Mother, these eyes
Having barely been oped to the light,
Ere thou hadst in fondness looked up to the skies,
And thy spirit had taken its flight:

Yet, oh! I believe thou didst gaze upon me
With a fondness that could not be told,
Ere heaven had opened its portals to thee,
Or thy form had grown lifeless and cold.

I love thee, dear Mother; and well do I know
I shall freely partake of thy love,
When, no longer a pilgrim and stranger below,
I shall go to be with thee above.

Grown weary of life, of its cares and its woes,
My father has gone to abide
With thee, in that land where no blast ever blows,
And is sleeping in peace at thy side.

And some of thy offspring, in life's early morn,
Were doomed like the flowers to fade;
And now they lie, wrapt in a slumber forlorn,
Near the spot where thy ashes are laid;

And I, too, am coming to join thee at last,
(All my sin and my follies forgiven,)
When life with its cares and its sufferings is past,
And will view thee the first time in heaven.