| |
| LIFT not, lift not the shadowy pall | |
| From the beauteous form it veileth— | |
| Nor ask, as the offerings of sorrow fall, | |
| Who ’t is that the mourner waileth! | |
| |
| For, we could not look on a face so dear | 5 |
| With the burial gloom surrounding.— | |
| A name so cherish’d we must not hear | |
| While her funeral bell is sounding. | |
| |
| But seek ’mid the throng of the youthful fair | |
| Their loveliest still to number!— | 10 |
| Ye will find her not, for ’t is her we bear | |
| In the mansion of death to slumber. | |
| |
| She ’s gone from our sight like a gladdening ray | |
| Of light, that awhile was given | |
| To brighten the earth; but hath past away, | 15 |
| All pure to its source in heaven. | |
| |
| Her heart so feeling and finely strung, | |
| It never was form’d for aching— | |
| For, when by grief it was rudely wrung | |
| It finish’d at once by breaking. | 20 |
| |
| And that tender flower to the cold, dark tomb, | |
| From the scenes she adorn’d is banish’d: | |
| She hath snapt from the stem in her morning bloom, | |
| Like a vision of beauty vanish’d! | |
| |
| A mournful group at her dying bed, | 25 |
| We watch’d with sorrowing o’er her, | |
| Till the soul shone forth with her pinions spread | |
| For a glorious world before her. | |
| |
| But grief was hush’d in the final hour, | |
| And mute we stood around her, | 30 |
| As the spirit escaped with a mighty power | |
| From the mortal cord that bound her. | |
| |
| For, the delicate clay lay pale and chill, | |
| Its painful conflict over; | |
| And we heard a voice pronounce, “Be still, | 35 |
| And know I AM JEHOVAH! | |
| |
| “The bars of the grave through time must be | |
| This sacred dust’s protection; | |
| But they who trust, shall find in me | |
| The life and the resurrection!” | 40 |
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