Albert Pike

My Sister

And thou too, dearest sister! thou art dead!
The pitiless archer once again has sped
At our small circle an unerring dart.
Thus, one by one, alas! from me depart
The images that, in fond memory stored,
I count, as jealous misers count their hoard.
The first fierce stroke the trembling heart that crushed,
The first wild feelings through the brain that rushed,
Are gone, and grief has now become more mild,
For I have wept, as though I were a child,—
I, who had thought my heart contained no tear.
I have returned from deserts wide and drear,
Prairie and snow and mountain eminent,
To hear that it has been thy lot to die,
To feel the snapping of another tie,
One of the few that bound me to the world.
For thou, whose lovely spirit now has furled
Its radiant wings, and folded close therein
Sleeps soundly in the grave, until the din
Of the archangel's mighty trump shall break
The silence of all sepulchres, and wake
All souls upon the resurrection morning;—thou
Didst ever love and trust in me, and now
Thy memory indeed is very dear;
My grief for thee most bitter and sincere.
Ah, heavy loss! ah, great calamity!
How sharp the blow that fate hath struck at me!
When I have climbed the slopes of the great mountains,
Where from eternal snows break out clear fountains,
That grow to mighty rivers; when my feet
Have bled and frozen, and the storms have beat
Upon me pitilessly; when my head
Has made the ground, the rock, the snow its bed,
And I have watched the cold stars stare above:
Then my great solace was my sister's love.
When I have felt most sad and most alone,
When I have walked through multitudes and known
No one that I could greet for olden time;
Or in those spacious solitudes sublime
That flank the Cordilleras; when, among
Their crags the war-whoop in my ears has rung:
When I have fancied I was quite forgot
By ancient friends, my name remembered not,
My features even forgotten, as the dead
When once they slumber in their narrow bed
Pass from men's memories in a day or two:
Then has my wearied soul flown homeward, through
The mist, and darkness; and in most intense
And passionate sorrow, thy proud confidence,
Thy love and faith my comforters have been,
And weaned me from myself and from my spleen.
Ah! sister dear! I have lost thee! thou art gone!
But yet thou hast not left me quite alone.
Perhaps before death closes my worn eyes,
I may again look on New England skies,
Weep at the graves, that like a miser's hoard,
Hold all my wealth, the loved and the adored;
And if, perchance, some one or two are left,
World-wanderers, by tyrannous Fate bereft
Of all that makes us loth with life to part,—
Mother or sister,—take them to my heart,
Shield them, protect them, so that when I die,
Some one above the truant's grave may sigh.