O, IT is life! departed days
Fling back their brightness while I gaze--
'Tis Emma's self--this brow so fair,
Half-curtained in this glossy hair,
These eyes, the very home of love,
The dark thin arches traced above,
These red-ripe lips that almost speak,
The fainter blush of this pure cheek,
The rose and lily's beauteous strife--
It is--ah, no! 'tis all _but_ life.
'Tis all _but_ life--art could not save
Thy graces, Emma, from the grave;
Thy cheek is pale, thy smile is past,
Thy love-lit eyes have looked their last,
Mouldering beneath the coffin's lid,
All we adored of thee is hid;
Thy heart, where goodness loved to dwell,
Is throbless in the narrow cell:
Thy gentle voice shall charm no more,
Its last, last joyful note is o'er.
Oft, oft, indeed, it hath been sung,
The requiem of the fair and young;
The theme is old, alas! how old,
Of grief that will not be controlled,
Of sighs that speak a father's woe,
Of pangs that none but mothers know,
Of friendship with its bursting heart,
Doomed from the idol-one to part--
Still its sad debt must feeling pay,
Till feeling, too, shall pass away.
O say, why age, and grief, and pain,
Shall long to go, but long in vain?
Why vice is left to mock at time,
And gray in years, grow gray in crime;
While youth, that every eye makes glad,
And beauty, all in radiance clad,
And goodness, cheering every heart,
Come, but come only to depart;
Sunbeams, to cheer life's wintry day,
Sunbeams, to flash, then fade away?
'Tis darkness all! black banners wave
Round the cold borders of the grave;
Then when in agony we bend
O'er the fresh sod that hides a friend,
One only comfort then we know--
We, too, shall quit this world of woe;
We, too, shall find a quiet place
With the dear lost ones of our race;
Our crumbling bones with theirs shall blend,
And life's sad story find an end.
And _is_ this all--this mournful doom?
Beams no glad light beyond the tomb?
Mark how yon clouds in darkness ride;
They do not quench the orb they hide;
Still there it wheels--the tempest o'er,
In a bright sky to burn once more;
So, far above the clouds of time,
Faith can behold a world sublime--
There, when the storms of life are past,
The light beyond shall break at last.