| |
| WHO will watch thee, little mound, | |
| When a few more years are done, | |
| And I go with them to rest | |
| In the silence that is best? | |
| Grave of my belovëd one, | 5 |
| When that I mine own have found, | |
| Who will watch thee, little mound? | |
| |
| Who will love thee, little grave? | |
| Thou must be as others are. | |
| Hearts low in the dust lie here, | 10 |
| Unloved, alone, unwept, and drear, | |
| Forgotten as a fallen star. | |
| Only from some dark sobbing wave | |
| The clouds shall bring their tears to lave | |
| Thy withered lilies, little grave. | 15 |
| |
| Airs that hover over thee, | |
| Little mound, are strangely sweet; | |
| Strangely sweet the odors shed | |
| By the blossoms round thy bed,— | |
| Blossoms for a maiden meet; | 20 |
| But, alas! how will it be | |
| When I lie at rest by thee? | |
| |
| After years that are a day | |
| In the swiftness of their flight, | |
| None among us will there be | 25 |
| Who will live remembering thee | |
| And thy beauty. Into night | |
| Who who mourn must take our way | |
| When the twilight cometh gray, | |
| After years that are a day. | 30 |
| |
| Silent cities of the dead | |
| Grow as old as hearts of men; | |
| Flowers sanctified, that bloom | |
| In the sunshine on a tomb, | |
| Have their little day, and then, | 35 |
| All their grace and glory fled, | |
| They are dead amid the dead. | |
| |
| Ah, God! how miserably lost | |
| The loveliest must be; for naught | |
| After a little space there lives | 40 |
| (Save the poor words the grave-stone gives | |
| To heedless eyes and careless thought) | |
| Of pure and blest of passion-tost: | |
| A few brief hours of bloom and frost, | |
| And where are those who loved the lost? | 45 |
| |
| Even our sorrows, seeming long, | |
| Must pass, as grains of sand must fall | |
| Beneath the infinite calm sea | |
| Of ages and eternity. | |
| We are faint shadows on a wall; | 50 |
| We look our last on love and wrong, | |
| Then fade as doth a silenced song. | |
| |
