My Mind and its Thoughts, in Sketches, Fragments, and Essays ::

263

STANZAS,

OCCASIONED BY THE QUESTION OF A FRIEND, “WHAT HAS PRESERVED YOU?”

When I saw my youth's best treasure,
Life's first blessing yield his breath—
Did my breaking heart resign him,
To the mouldering caves of death?

No—I watched him, fondly watched him,
With a mother's longing eye;
Gazing on each tranquil feature,
Till it seemed too dear to die.

This is no poetical fiction. When it was thought incumbent to perform the last pious obligation, resigning the dead to the sepulchre of his maternal Ancestors, under the desperate possibility that life was not wholly extinguished, his desolate Mother continued to visit the melancholy aisle, in which his remains were deposited, until even that last Hope was extinguished—and “Another and a better world” alone remains to console her incurable afflictions.

Eight lorn days of speechless horror,
Morning saw my steps return;
And the glooms of evening found me,
Weeping o'er the unburied urn.

Still as cold as Parian marble,
Were those features, resting mild—
But this dying heart felt colder,
Than the bosom of its child.

Dying, but not yet to perish,
Heaven in pity saw its woes,
And on calm'd religion resting,
Bid the murmurer find repose.

Hovering, like an angel o'er me,
When of life was lost the care—
She, the child of hope, sustained me,
She has saved me from despair.

University of Virginia Library

STANZAS,

OCCASIONED BY THE QUESTION OF A FRIEND, “WHAT HAS PRESERVED YOU?”