File:Waifs, and their authors (1880) (14740618036).jpg

Identifier: waifstheirauthor00hopk (find matches)
Title: Waifs, and their authors
Year: 1880 (1880s)
Authors: Hopkins, Alphonso A. (Alphonso Alva), 1843-1918
Subjects: American literature American poetry
Publisher: Boston, D. Lothrop and Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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! They are idols of hearts and of households ; They are angels of God in disguise ;His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses, His glory still gleams in their eyes ;Those truants from home and from heaven— They have made me more manly and mild ;And I know now how Jesus could liken The kingdom of God to a child ! I ask not a life for the dear ones, All radiant, as others have done.But that life may have just enough shadow To temper the glare of the sunI w^ould pray God to guard them from evil. But my prayer would bound back to myself ;Ah ! a seraph may pray for a sinner, But a sinner must pray.for himself. ^^--^ The twig is so easily bended, I have banished the rule and the rod ;I have taught them the goodness of knowledge, They have taught me the goodness of God ;My heart is the dungeon of darkness. Where I shut them for breaking a rule ;My frown is sufficient correction ; My love is the law of the school. I shall leave the old house in the Autumn,To traverse its threshold no more ;
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There are idols ot heart and oi households;They are angels of God in disguise. p„^e 130. CHARLES M. DICKINSON. 131 Ah! how I shall sigh for the dear ones,• That meet me each mom at the door ! I shall miss the good-nights and the kisses, And the gush of their innocent glee,The group on the green, and the flowers That are brought every morning for me. I shall miss them at morn and at even. Their song in the school and the street ;I shall miss the low hum of their voices, And the tread ot their delicate feet.When the lessons of life are all ended. And death says, The school is dismissed !May the little ones gather around me To bid me good-night and be kissed Dickens wrote many beautiful things, in that poeti-cal prose into which he so easily and so often dropped,but he could never have written this, any more than wecould have penned David Copperfield. Certainminds think in rhythm, as it were, by instinct; and oneof these gave us The Children, but it was not themind of the great novel

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