“I come, I come,”
And a maiden sat in her summer bower,
In the changeful gleam of the twilight hour,
And joy was in her home.

Afar, afar,
From her happy cot, ‘mid the clustering vines,
where the pale moonbeam in silver shines,
She gazed on each bright star.

A gentle prayer
On the low night wind as it murmur’d by,
Like the sound of some passing spirit’s sigh,
She whisper’d softly there.

An icy breath,
A hurrying wing, as of speedy flight,
A darkness shrouding a sunny light,
And the maiden sleeps in death.

“I come, I come,”
And a child with eyes like the sky’s own blue,
Sat playing amid the flowers, and dew,
And peace was in his home.

Loudly, and wild,
A burst of joy thro’ the calm air thrills,
And echo’d by mountains, vales, and hills;
‘Twas the laughter of a child.

Silent, and hush’d,
The air blows chill, and the flowers depart,
And the stream grows still at the child’s glad heart,
And death the blossoms crush’d.

“I come, I come,”
And a worn old man with his locks of gray,
On a bed-rid couch at morning lay,
And quiet fill’d his home.

He dream’d of joy;
And the sunny light of his childhood’s track
To his fading vision came brightly back,
And he dream’d he was a boy.

His eye grew dim,
And a sudden shuddering o’er him crept,
A gentle sigh—and the old man slept,
For death had shrouded him.

“I come, I come,”
It came like the blast of the dread simoom,
A trumpet tone from the hiding tomb,
And a sadness fill’d each home.

The Cry of Death, Catherine H. Waterman