CHARLES SPRAGUE, “The Family Meeting” in The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850

CHARLES SPRAGUE, “The Family Meeting” in The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850

This poem first appeared in the 1837 edition of the Boston Book, and then again in the Writings of Charles Sprague, Now First Collected (1841). In the first stanza Sprague dramatizes a heartwarming family scene: “We’re all at home…around our old familiar hearth.” But the second stanza introduces the conflict, with “We’re not all here.” The missing family members have been lost to death: “Some like a night-flash passed away; and some sank, lingering, day by day.” He resolves this conflict in the third stanza, writing that memory brings the lost family members back to the hearth and to their hearts. This ultimately reassuring poem shows Sprague’s connection to family life and his capacity for tenderness.

Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts

CHARLES SPRAGUE, “The Family Meeting” in The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850

     We are all here!
     Father, Mother,
     Sister, Brother,
All who hold each other dear.
Each chair is filled — we’re all at home,
To-night let no cold stranger come;
It is not often thus around
Our old familiar hearth we’re found.
Bless, then, the meeting and the spot;
For once be every care forgot;
Let gentle Peace assert her power,
And kind Affection rule the hour;
      We’re all — all here.

      We’re not all here!
Some are away — the dead ones dear,
Who thronged with us this ancient hearth,
And gave the hour to guiltless mirth.
Fate, with a stern, relentless hand,
Looked in and thinned our little band;

Some like a night-flash passed away,
And some sank, lingering, day by day;
The quiet graveyard — some lie there —
And cruel Ocean has his share —
      We’re not all here.

      We are all here!
Even they — the dead — though dead, so dear.
Fond Memory, to her duty true,
Brings back their faded forms to view.
How life-like, through the mist of years,
Each well-remembered face appears!
We see them as in times long past;
From each to each kind looks are cast;
We hear their words, their smiles behold,
They’re round us as they were of old —

We are all here.
We are all here!

Father, Mother,
     Sister, Brother,
You that I love with love so dear.
This may not long.of us be said;
Soon must we join the gathered dead;
And by the hearth we now sit round,
Some other circle will be found.
O, then, that wisdom may we know,
Which yields a life of peace below!
So, in the world to follow this,
May each repeat, in words of bliss,
         We’re all — all here!