In the days when passion budded,
      And she in the churchyard lain
    Came over his books as he studied
      With an exquisite pang of pain,
    He played to his sons their mother’s
      Old favorites ere she wed;
    Those tunes, like hundreds of others,
      Were requiems of the dead.

    They lay in the kirk’s inclosure: 
      All three, in the shadows dim,
    In a cenotaph’s cynosure
      That waited for only him,
    Who sat with his fiddle tuning
      On the spot where his fame was won,
    On the empty world communing,
      Without a wife or a son.

    And he drew his bow so plaintive
      And loud, like a human cry,
    That the light of the shutter darkened
      From somebody passing by. 
    A young man peeped at the pensive
      Great man, so familiar known;
    His features, if inoffensive,
      Were like to the judge’s own.

    “Come in,” cried the politician—­
      “Come not,” his soul would have said—­
    “Thou bringest to me a vision
      Of a sin ere thy mother wed,
    When I, wild boy from college,
      Her humble desert o’ercame,
    And we hid the guilty knowledge
      Beneath thy father’s name.”

    The youth delayed no longer,
      His sense of music strong,
    Nor knew of his mother’s wronger,
      Nor that she had known a wrong;
    Deep in the grave the secret
      Her husband might never guess. 
    He stood before his father
      With a loyal gentleness.

    “What tune, fair boy, desirest
      My old friend’s worthy son?—­
    Say but what thou requirest,
      And for father’s sake ’tis done.” 
    “Oh!  Judge, our State’s defender,
      Whose life has all been power,
    Play me the tune most tender,
      When thou felt thy greatest hour!”

    The old man thought a minute,
      Irresolutely stirred,
    As if his fiddle’s humor
      Changed like a mocking-bird;
    Then, as his tears came raining
      Upon the plaintive chords,
    He played the invitation
      To the sinner, of his Lord’s.

    “Come, poor and needy sinners,
      And weak and sick, and sore,
    The patient Jesus lingers
      To draw you through the door.” 
    It was a tune remembered
      From old revival nights,
    In crowded country churches,
      Where dimly blew the lights.

    And boys grew superstitious
      To hear the mourners wail. 
    The great man, self-degraded,
      So sighed his contrite tale
    In notes that failed for sobbing,
      To feel Heaven’s sentence well,
    That took away his Isaac
      And blessed the Ishmael.

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