In The Darkened World

So that's what you call good news for me,
Young Janet who loves me so?
For your poor blind grandmother sitting here
While the world goes to and fro?
I'll try to be glad, if it gladdens you, dear,
To move to the wonderful town,
And live out my life in your father's house
When they tear the homestead down.
They're to lay the rails through the heart of this house?
And thousands they ll have to pay?
They'll lay the rails, honey, across my heart.
Their thousands I'd give to stay.
For my little world is here, sweet child,
Cradle and home and bier;
And my step is sure and I know each nook,
And each has a memory here.
I shall try anew in my son s grand house:
The blind are quick to learn.
But when the blind are old, it is love
Must help at every turn.
You will lead me? Ay, I am sure you will:
But think what I ll leave behind,
Where the Lord has led me with glints of love,
And I scarce have known I'm blind.
For nothing can change in my sightless land:
It is fenced with love around.
Love rises and glows with the morning sun:
Love grows in the cool, damp ground.
My little world goes up to the hills
That are heaving over there:
It follows the river down to the gorge:
Its skies are blue and fair.
It is there at the open door, my Ralph,
My husband smiling stands,
His kind brown eyes bent on my face,
My face held in his hands.
It is here by the window, James, my son,
Sits list'ning to fairy tales,
While his father smokes in the easy chair,
And his kind smile never fails.
Over here it is that my little Sue
Lies wax-like, white and cold.
She was only five when she left us, dear,
And her hair was a shower of gold.
I can find my way to the garden gate,
And my heart beats proud and high
And I see my Ralph with his sword in hand
As his regiment marches by.
It was under the maples when letters came,
I read of my Ralph's hard fight
In the Southern land, for the Union cause
The cause of his God and Right.
It was there the postmaster came in May
The apple-trees white as foam
To "break the news," as he said, to me
That Ralph would never come home.
There day by day I sat in a daze,
Waiting in rain or shine,
Till lightning struck thro the heart of the tree,
As the Lord had riven mine.
And here when I woke in a darkened world,
And knew that my grief was sin,
God gave me my small world back again,
And his light stole gently in.
I can stand in the grass on the little lawn,
And know where the dusty road
Runs rising over the hilltop green
To my dear ones last abode
Where I might follow and know each step
To the headstones on the West,
Where willows and hemlock droop like me,
And every mound says "rest."
Can I take this small world with me, dear,
To the City's heart of stone,
Where I cannot touch the things they touched
And the soul must strive alone?
One life may garner one sheaf of joy:
One heart feel one great pain:
And the days that come and the nights that go,
For all beside are vain.