XII.
Within a mile of Edinburgh Town
We laid our little darling down;
Our first seed in God's acre sown!
So sweet a place! Death looked beguiled
Of half his gloom; or softly smiled
To win our wondrous spirit-child.
God giveth His Beloved sleep
So calm, within its silence deep,
As Angel-guards the watch might keep.
The City looketh solemn and sweet;
It bares a gentle brow, to greet
The Mourners mourning at its feet.
The sea of human life breaks round
This shore o' the dead, with softened sound:
Wild-flowers climb each mossy mound
To place in resting hands their palm,
And breathe their beauty, bloom, and balm;
Folding the dead in fragrant calm.
A lighter shadow Grief might wear;
And old Heartache come gather there
The peace that falleth after prayer.
Poor heart, that danced among the vines
All reeling-ripe with sweet love-wines,
Thou walk'st with Death among the pines!
Lorn Mother, at the dark grave-door,
She kneeleth, pleading o'er and o'er,
But it is shut for evermore.
Blind, blind! She feels, but cannot read
Aright; then leans as she would feed
The dear dead lips that never heed.
The spirit of life may leap above,
But in that grave her prisoned Dove
Lies, cold to th' warm embrace of love,
And dark, though all the world is bright;
And lonely, with a City in sight;
And desolate in the rainy night.
Ah, God! when in the glad life-cup
The face of Death swims darkly up;
The crowning flower is sure to droop!
And so we laid our Darling down,
When Summer's face grew ripely brown,
And still, though grief hath milder grown,
Unto the Stranger's land we cleave,
Like some poor Birds that grieve and grieve,
Round the robbed nest, and cannot leave.
