I WISH thee sound health and true sanity,
Ripe youth, a summer heart in age’s snow,
Abiding joy in knowledge, wealth enow
That of the best thou ne’er mayst hindered be;
Long life, love, marriage, children, faithful friends,
Purpose in all thy doing, stintless zeal,
Ambition, enthusiasm, the power to feel
Thy country dearer than thy private ends;
The threefold joy of Nature, books, and fun,
To be thy solace in adversity,
To keep thy father’s name as clean as he,
And so transmit it stainless to thy son;
And lastly, crown of glory and of strife,
May honored death give thee Eternal Life.
Now count my wishes, and, the numbering done,
You’ll find the enumeration—twenty-one.
“MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE.”
A LITTLE grave in a desolate spot,
Where the sun scarce shines and flowers grow not,
Where the prayers of the church are never heard,
And the funeral bell swings not in air,
And the brooding silence is only stirred
By the cries of wild birds nesting there;
A low headstone, and a legend, green
With moss: “Leonora, just seventeen.”
Here she was laid long years ago,
A child in years, but a woman in woe.
Her sorrowful story is half forgot,
Her playmates are old and bent and gray,
And no one comes to visit the spot
Where, watched by the law, was hurried away
The youth cut short, and the hapless bloom
Which fled from its sorrow to find the tomb.
Her mourning kindred pleaded in vain
The broken heart and the frenzied brain;
The church had no pardon for such as died
Unblessed by the church, and sternly barred
All holy ground to the suicide;
So death as life to the girl was hard,
And the potter’s field with its deep disgrace
Was her only permitted resting-place.
So the friends who loved her laid her there
With no word of comfort, no word of prayer,
And years went by; but as, one by one,
They dropped from their daily tasks and died,
And turned their faces from the sun,
They were carried and buried by her side,—
Each gave command that such should be,
“For love to keep her company.”
So the little grave, with the letters green,
Of “Leonora, just seventeen,”
Is ringed about with kindred dust,
Not lonely like the other graves
In that sad place, wherein are thrust
Outcasts and nameless folk and slaves,
But gently held and folded fast
In the arms that loved her first and last.
O potter’s field, did I call you bare?
No garden on earth can be more fair!
For deathless love has a deathless bloom,
And the lily of faithfulness a flower,
And they grow beside each lowly tomb,
And balm it with fragrance every hour;
And with God, who forgiveth till seven times seven,
A potter’s field may be gate of heaven.