I.
A group of merry children played;
The smiling sun to watch them stayed;
A cloud came by with deadly shade;
“Unus abest.”
II.
Bright faces glow ’mid dance and game;
Hush! some one named a well-known name;
But dance and song go on the same;
“Unus abest.”
III.
A father joins his children’s mirth;
A mother mourns an awful dearth;
“Ashes to ashes, earth to earth;”
“Unus abest.”
IV.
One sits before a lonely fire,
Watching the flame’s unsteady spire
Wasting with suicidal ire;
“Unus abest.”
V.
Thus, day by day, in house or street,
We miss some form we used to meet;
Some human heart has ceased to beat;
“Unus abest.”
VI.
The years pass on; our hair is grey;
A few years more we’ll pass away,
Each leaving to his friends to say
“Unus abest.”
VII.
Then let us live that, when the call
Of the Great Trumpet wakes us all,
These words from God’s high throne may fall:
“NULLUS ABEST.”