Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

338 ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
That Almighty Power, that called thee forth
And bade thee act thy part till called from off
Life's stage. We have no fears for thee for thou
Art with It, the Oversoul, the All, which
Mighty power within us and without
We know and feel making for righteousness.
Thou art relieved, released, set free, enfranchised;
But they who mourn thee — what of them.?
Their load's increased, their burden greater;
Harder and harder still to bear life's pain.
Thou wast the object of their love, to thee.
To thee the parents' hearts turned fond and proud.
That love still lives, but thou art not!
Nature's order seems reversed; thou shouldst shed
Upon their bier thy filial tears, but they.
Instead, now bury thee with broken hearts.
They grope in darkness, seeking what may
Stay their souls and find, alas, but this —
The same which in his bitter hours, with tears
Repentant and abased, the warrior king
Found, as so many since his day,
He cannot come to us but we can go
To him.
This afterglow of his gifted mind he has left for our con-
templation; very soon after writing this his pen grew still forever.
The month of December holds two anniversaries that must
ever bring to Sister Ida and me, yes and to the families of our
two brothers, a memory that touches the deep places of the
heart with a long sweep on those chords that must echo with
sadness to the end of the journey. December 19, 1898,
Brother William passed away from us, all too soon we could
but feel. He was sixty-two years old, while our people have
generally lived to be past seventy and even beyond eighty.
Our dear mother, however, was but sixty-six when her call
came. Thirteen years after Brother William's death and
upon another December day, the twenty-first, our younger
brother, Joseph, left this earth far away upon the island of
Jamaica. As I finish the last chapter in this book in the year
that took from me my companion of more than fifty years of
married hfe and in the last month of the year and consider that