Sunday Afternoons by Joseph C. Lincoln

From the window of the chapel softly sounds an organ's note, / Through the wintry Sabbath gloaming drifting shreds of music float, / And the quiet and the firelight and the sweetly solemn tunes / Bear me, dreaming, back to boyhood and its Sunday afternoons:

When we gathered in the parlor, in the parlor stiff and grand, / Where the haircloth chairs and sofas stood arrayed, a gloomy band, / Where each queer oil portrait watched us with a countenance of wood, / And the shells upon the what-not in a dustless splendor stood.

Then the quaint old parlor organ with the quaver in its tongue, / Seemed to tremble in its fervor as the sacred songs were sung, / As we sang the homely anthems, sang the glad revival hymns / Of the glory of the story and the light no sorrow dims.

While the dusk grew ever deeper and the evening settled down, / And the lamp-lit windows twinkled in the drowsy little town, / Old and young we sang the chorus and the echoes told it o'er / In the dear familiar voices, hushed or scattered evermore.

From the window of the chapel faint and low the music dies, / And the picture in the firelight fades before my tear-dimmed eyes, / But my wistful fancy, listening, hears the night-wind hum the tunes / That we sang there in the parlor on those Sunday afternoons.