University of Virginia Library

A DIRGE.

CONCLUSION TO “SKETCHES FROM A PAINTER'S STUDIO.”

Here let never wild winds rave;
Winter howl not o'er her tomb;
Only come anigh this grave
Summer shade and gentle gloom,
And round it ever soft low winds keep moan,
And sobs flow by,
And faint airs sigh
Sad murmurs of the fading year alone.
Low we laid her, cold and pale,
Whiter than her folding shroud,
With a grief not told aloud,
Sudden sob and smothered wail;
Withered violets tell her tale—
Tender blooms, the gleam swift lost,
The fleeting breath
Of early Spring tempts forth to blighting frost
And icy death.
Unoped lilies o'er her tomb
strew—
Primroses—the purple bloom
Of hyacinths and faint perfume
Of every frailest star that peeps the April through.
Fair she was and sweet as they,
With azure laugh within her eyes
That tears and sadness gleamed away,
A thing we said unmade for sighs,
Till, woe, love came!
Oh, tears, that love, life's best of worth,
Love, joy of the rejoicing earth,
Her days should claim
From girlhood's mirths and careless sports and gay
Light-hearted laughs and low-breathed prayers away,
For gaze-drooped shame,
For sobs and death—the cold, still tomb's decay,
An unbreathed name.
Yet ever in our thought she lies
A memory all reproof above,
On whom reproach turns not its eyes,
But only love:
Love with a misty gaze of gathering tears,
That no accusing word of chiding memory hears.
But unto him
Comes she not in the watches of the night,
The chamber's gloom,
Thronging the dim
And spectral room
With wan, felt presence, that the shuddering sight
Aches out upon through the dim taper's light,
Till cold damps start
On his dank forehead, and through his keen ears
Throng palpable the utterings of his fears,
And, ghastly fright
Scourging his spotted soul, again he hears
In the old tones that the remembered years
Thrilled with delight,
The grave-closed sorrow of her tale of tears?
Such wages win
The accursed sin,
The serpent sin that on her pureness stole,
Sliming its track across her spotless soul,
Poisoning to ill the holy peace within.
Yet there is rest for all,
Sleep for the weariest eyes:
In peace she quiet lies
Where chequered shadows fall
Across her low-heaped grave,
Where the wild winds in grief forget to rave,
And ever the loud gusts of winter blow
In moanings low,
Wailing for her our sorrow might not save.
The hueless rose,
The pallid lily plant upon her tomb,
So shall their vestal glory light its gloom,
Its shadowing gloom, with the pure gleam of snows,
And their white beauty shall the summer show
Our weeping love for her who sleeps below.