Poems and miscellanies selected from the writings of Miss Eliza Townsend ::

First of primeval monuments! of all
The long lost trophies won by elder Time,
Fondly the mental eye reverts to thee,
Reared by the Patriarch to that Syrian spouse,
So beauteous, so beloved! meed of his toils,
What time, a wanderer from his father's house,
He sought the stranger land, and twice seven years
Of labor hard, and harder outrage proved,
When by the day the drought consumed his strength,
And frost benumbed at night! yet all was deemed
But little for the love and hope of her
Who blessed his after life; and in her turn,
For sire and country, friends and kindred left,
Found him her all in all, and paid him back
The “debt immense” of that long suffering love.
Nor died it with her death; but reared this stone
To witness it through ages yet to come.

156

True, mightier things have been; the mounds where Thebes
Enshrines her nameless dead, and that famed pile
Of the world's wonders Artemisia reared
To her lost lord, then died for loss of him;
Yet tend'rer thoughts and busier phantasies
Stray toward the grave of Haran's shepherdess,
And seek from Bethel's heights to Ephrath's way
That lonely sepulchre!

University of Virginia Library

THE FIRST GRAVESTONE.