Lovingly Inscribed To 'Grandma Fulton.'

You wondered why my fingers clasped
So lovingly that withered hand;
The tenderness that filled my heart
You saw, yet could not understand.
Yet will the mystery be explained:
My impulse you will comprehend
When you are told that aged one
Was, in her youth, my mother's friend.

Those snowy locks in other years
Luxuriant hung, in graceful curls
Perchance, and oft touched mother's cheek
With soft caress, when both were girls.
That breath commingled with her own,
As the young head would trusting bend,
To tell, in low, confiding tone,
Her secrets to her early friend.

With such a bitter, aching void
As life must hold when mothers go,
No matter when, – if full of years,
Or in their noontide's golden glow,
It is not strange my weary heart
Should long to feel those arms descend
And fold in motherly embrace
The daughter of her early friend.

I wonder if the mists of years
Melt in the radiance of the skies?
Will heaven restore our faded bloom,
And youth return in Paradise?
Do blighted hopes and vanished joys
Revive, return when earth's dreams end?
If so, what glad surprise awaits,
Beyond the blue, my mother's friend!

Oh, peaceful be her closing hour,
And soothing the familiar tone
That bids her deathless spirit rise
Where weight of years is all unknown!
May the same hand that points her way
Clasp mine when life and care shall end,
And bear me to the shining shore,
To join my mother's early friend!