She knelt beside her brother’s grave,
The day was near its close;
And where the cool, tall grasses wave,
She lay a fresh-cut rose.
Then, from a silver waiter near,
She drew a wreath of white,
Besprinkled with the twilight’s tear,
O’ershaded with the night,
And placed them on the green-kept mound.
I watched her kneeling there,
Her face bent on the sacred ground,
In attitude of prayer;
And while a bird sang soft his hymn,
Down-looking from above,
We saw unveiled a picture dim--
A statue true of love.
In Memory of Fannie Johnson White.
If I could blend into my verse
That soft and slumb’rous haze,
So faintly resting on the rose
Before the autumn days
Have chilled its heart, and numbed the leaves,
And drunk the precious dew,
Then could I melodize in song,
Her life so pure and true.
Or could I weave into this song
Her smile, so rich and rare,
That found its way to every heart,
And left its halo there--
Then earth would not seem desolate,
Or days be lone or long,
Since she would sweetly live again
In verse, and smile in song.
All this is vain! both pen and voice,
Too weak to speak her worth;
Though memory writes in words of gold,
Her beauteous deeds on earth.
Heaven claimed our flower--there we may bloom,
If we the watchword keep:
“Whatsoever thou shall sow,
That also thou shall reap.”
The Heliotrope’s Soliloquy.