Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Margaret JunkinPreston

478 The Vision of the Snow

“SHE has gone to be with the angels;”

So they had always said

To the little questioner asking

Of his fair, young mother, dead.

They had never told of the darkness

Of the sorrowful, silent tomb,

Nor scared the sensitive spirit

By linking a thought of gloom

With the girl-like, beautiful being,

Who patiently from her breast,

Had laid him in baby-sweetness,

To pass to her early rest.

And when he would lisp—“Where is she?”

Missing the mother-kiss,

They answered—“A way in a country

That is lovelier far than this:—

“A land all a-shine with beauty

Too pure for our mortal sight,

Where the darling ones who have left us

Are walking in robes of white.”

And with eagerest face he would listen,

His tremulous lips apart,

Till the thought of the Beautiful Country

Haunted his yearning heart.

One morn, as he gazed from the window,

A miracle of surprise,

A marvellous, mystic vision

Dazzled his wondering eyes.

Born where the winter’s harshness

Is tempered with spring-tide glow,

The delicate Southern nursling

Never had seen the snow.

And clasping his childish fingers,

He turned with a flashing brow,

And cried—“We have got to heaven—

Show me my mother now!”