Silent boy,
Face, melancholy,
Your brooding eyes
Tell a story.

Tell me why yon golden tears
Course a cherub's cheeks?
Why the sorrow of four-score years
Plows velvet in coarse creeks?

Sweet boy, speak out,
Tell us your pain,
What your eyes have seen,
Your heart, its bane?

The child, he looked,
His eyes, unseeing.
His soul abrooked
Torment in being.

'My father', he whispered,
'My father', he said.
'My father', he whimpered,
'My father . . .  he's dead'.