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Poems

By Edward Quillinan. With a Memoir by William Johnston

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ELEGY ON A YOUNG LADY WHO DIED AT TORQUAY, FEB. 2, 1833.
  
  
  
  
  
  


253

ELEGY ON A YOUNG LADY WHO DIED AT TORQUAY, FEB. 2, 1833.

We weep with soften'd grief the aged dead;
When the young die more bitter tears we shed:
We quiver when the shroud-wrapt sleeper wears
Rich glossy locks instead of thin white hairs.
Does startled Pity chide, then, His decree,
Who said to Marian's soul, “Return to me?”
Alas! we mourn in impotence, we rave
In ignorance and folly o'er the grave!
'Tis selfish guilt to grieve for one so good,
Though summon'd in the bloom of womanhood.
Yet if so good, so modest, pure and kind,
The harder lot for those she leaves behind:
Her thoughts reflected all things fresh and fair;
Why so soon broken was that mirror rare?
Why was so just a standard thus denied
To our observance? We have lost a guide.
Again we question, and in sin demur
In sorrow for ourselves lamenting her.

254

But Mercy, sentient to each human tear,
Forgives, perhaps, what Wisdom frowns to hear.
It was so lately in the month of June—
June's leafy month, when birds were all in tune,
All sweetest flowers in blossom, all sweet words,
Pure as those flowers, and blithesome as those birds,
Mingling in gay confusion in the bowers
Of Bronsil, haunt of children's happiest hours—
It was so lately that I saw her first,
Where tender minds were by her virtues nurst;
There I beheld her to all hearts endear'd,
And fresh in health as the young plants she rear'd.
It was more lately, in the harvest moon,
I last beheld her, to be mourn'd so soon!
Her cheek was mantled with a floral bloom,—
Perfidious roses, blossoms of the tomb.
A few short weeks; the bland breath of Torbay
Play'd on her brow as treacherous breezes play.
A few weeks yet—she sleeps on Devon's shore
The sleep that never shall be broken more,
Till the dread voice of Judgment cries, “Behold!
How on your lives has her remembrance told?
In vain your words bewail'd her laid in earth,
Unless your deeds exemplified her worth.”