There’s a little hair trunk in the attic stored,

Under the rafters packed away;

With a heart nigh broken, a mother’s hands

Tenderly carried it there one day.

The tears fell fast as she closed the lid

On the homely trinkets—you’ll call them so,—

That her baby loved, then with one more kiss

On the little hair trunk, she turned to go.

Now on the lid is the dust of years,—

I wonder what think all the toys within!

Do they wish for the baby voice, still so long,

To arouse them once more with its boyish din?

In the attic I happened to be one day,

I couldn’t help taking a tiny peep,—

They were just as he left them, every one,—

Oh, well, perhaps it was foolish to weep!

A bottle of beans (they were yellow and black);

He called them his “stock,” which he bought and sold;

A “Mother Goose Rhymes”—and his finger prints

Were still on its covers, now ragged and old!

A “Dinah” doll, without any hair,—

All these I found—the others you know,

For perhaps a like little trunk you placed

Under the rafters, too, long ago!