| |
| HER hands are cold; her face is white; | |
| No more her pulses come and go; | |
| Her eyes are shut to life and light;— | |
| Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, | |
| And lay her where the violets blow. | 5 |
| |
| But not beneath a graven stone, | |
| To plead for tears with alien eyes; | |
| A slender cross of wood alone | |
| Shall say, that here a maiden lies | |
| In peace beneath the peaceful skies. | 10 |
| |
| And gray old trees of hugest limb | |
| Shall wheel their circling shadows round | |
| To make the scorching sunlight dim | |
| That drinks the greenness from the ground, | |
| And drop their dead leaves on her mound. | 15 |
| |
| When o’er their boughs the squirrels run, | |
| And through their leaves the robins call, | |
| And, ripening in the autumn sun, | |
| The acorns and the chestnuts fall, | |
| Doubt not that she will heed them all. | 20 |
| |
| For her the morning choir shall sing | |
| Its matins from the branches high, | |
| And every minstrel-voice of Spring, | |
| That trills beneath the April sky, | |
| Shall greet her with its earliest cry. | 25 |
| |
| When, turning round their dial-track, | |
| Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, | |
| Her little mourners, clad in black, | |
| The crickets, sliding through the grass, | |
| Shall pipe for her an evening mass. | 30 |
| |
| At last the rootlets of the trees | |
| Shall find the prison where she lies, | |
| And bear the buried dust they seize | |
| In leaves and blossoms to the skies. | |
| So may the soul that warmed it rise! | 35 |
| |
| If any, born of kindlier blood, | |
| Should ask, What maiden lies below? | |
| Say only this: A tender bud, | |
| That tried to blossom in the snow, | |
| Lies withered where the violets blow. | 40 |
| |
