Listen closer. When you have done
With woods and cornfields and grazing herds;
A lady, the loveliest ever the sun
Looked down upon, you must paint for me;
Oh, if I only could make you see
The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman's soul and the angel's face
That are beaming on me all the while!
I need not speak these foolish words;
Yet one word tells you all I would say,--
She is my mother: you will agree
That all the rest may be thrown away.
Two little urchins at her knee
You must paint, sir; one like me,--
The other with a clearer brow,
And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise;
At ten years old he went to sea,--
God knoweth if he be living now,--
He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"
Nobody ever crossed her track
To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more
Since that old ship went out of the bay
With my great-hearted brother on her deck;
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
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