Page:Poems Rice.djvu/109

For destiny and my strange fate debarring
 My choice in simple matters of this kind,
Discord continually our happiness is marring;
 A perfect home I do not seek to find.

If you will enter now, my family composing,
 See three in number over whom I care,
My broken wing beneath as trustingly reposing,
 Three precious ones with faces all so fair;
Death came so terrible, affrighting ever
 To these, and drove them to my mountain nest;
Here to remain, I hope, until the same shall sever,
 Till they again shall meet 'the loved and blest;

Till they again shall meet their father and their mother,
 So rudely torn from their soft warm embrace;
Poor children, here to find no friend, no other
 To whom to cling, to find no resting-place,
To lean on me, their tender wants confiding,
 And I so frail; but then I do resign
Them all to Him, and in His love abiding
 To watch and guard them with His care divine.

A general harmony pervades our humble dwelling,
 A discord seldom comes to jar the ear;
*Mid daily duties, often though repelling,
 The sun is seldom ever clouded here;
Sickness and sorrow, with their touch so blighting,
 Within our circle only I have known;
Those to suppress I constantly am fighting,
 I wonder now how I should dare to own.