_For the Table Book._
The flower is faded,
The sun-beam is fled,
The bright eye is shaded,
The loved one is dead:
Like a star in the morning--
When, mantled in gray,
Aurora is dawning--
She vanish’d away.
Like the primrose that bloometh
Neglected to die,
Though its sweetness perfumeth
The ev’ning’s soft sigh--
Like lightning in summer,
Like rainbows that shine
With a mild dreamy glimmer
In colours divine--
The kind and pure hearted,
The tender, the true,
From our love has departed
With scarce an adieu:
So briefly, so brightly
In virtue she shone,
As shooting stars nightly
That blaze and are gone.
The place of her slumber
Is holy to me,
And oft as I number
The leaves of the tree,
Whose branches in sorrow
Bend over her urn,
I think of to-morrow
And silently mourn.
The farewell is spoken,
The spirit sublime
The last tie has broken,
That bound it to time;
And bright is its dwelling
Its mansion of bliss--
How far, far excelling
The darkness of this!
Yet hearts still are beating,
And eyes still are wet--
True, our joys are all fleeting,
But who can forget?
I know they must vanish
As visions depart,
But oh, can this banish
The thorn from my heart?
The eye of affection,
Its tribute of tears
Sheds, with fond recollection
Of life’s happy years;
And tho’ vain be the anguish
Indulg’d o’er the tomb,
Yet nature will languish
And shrink from its gloom.
Those lips--their least motion
Was music to me,
And, like light on the ocean,
Those eyes seem’d to be:
Are they mute--and for ever?
The spell will not break;
Are they closed--must I never
Behold them awake?
When distress was around me
Thy smiles were as balm,
That in misery found me,
And left me in calm:
Success became dearer
When thou wert with me,
And the clear sky grew clearer
When gaz’d on with thee.
Thou art gone--and tho’ reason
My grief would disarm,
I feel there’s a season
When grief has a charm;
And ’tis sweeter, far sweeter
To sit by thy grave,
Than to follow Hope’s meteor
Down time’s hasty wave.
In darkness we laid thee--
The earth for thy bed--
The couch that we made thee
Is press’d by thee dead:
In sorrow’s film shrouded,
Our eyes could not see
The glory unclouded
That opened on thee.
Thou canst not, pure spirit,
Return to the dust,
But we may inherit--
So humbly we trust--
The joys without measure
To which thou art gone,
The regions of pleasure
Where tears are unknown.