366 THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS
WE walk'd along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopp'd, he look'd, and said
‘The will of God be done!’
A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering gray;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.
And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills
We travell'd merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.
‘Our work,’ said I, ‘was well begun;
Then from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?’
A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:
‘Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full thirty years behind.
‘And just above yon slope of corn
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky that April morn
Of this the very brother.
‘With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
And coming to the church, stopp'd short
Beside my daughter's grave.
‘Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang:—she would have been
A very nightingale.
‘Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more—
For so it seem'd,—than till that day
I ne'er had loved before.
‘And turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the churchyard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
‘A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
‘No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripp'd with foot so free;
She seem'd as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.
‘There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I look'd at her, and look'd again:
And did not wish her mine!’
—Matthew is in his grave, yet now
Methinks I see him stand
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.