UPON her mother’s bosom lay
Young Mira, and she pined away.
’T was in her own maternal shed;
And thus the anxious mother said:—
“What ails thee, tell me, Mira! pray?”
“O ask me not, my mother dear!
I feel that death approaches near;
I shall not rise from this my bed;
But, mother mine! when I am dead—
O mother mine! call round me all
My playmates to my funeral:
And let the friends I loved receive
The little gifts that I shall leave;
Then let me sleep in peace beneath.—
There’s one, my mother, I should grieve
To be divided from in death.
Then call around me priests divine,
And pious pilgrims, mother mine!
The forehead of thy dying daughter
Steep in the rose’s fragrant water.
And, mother, let my forehead be
Dried with the rose-leaves from the tree;
And pillow not thy daughter’s head,
O mother! with the common dead;
But let me have a quiet tomb
Adjacent to my Mirjo’s home,
And near my Mirjo’s nightly bed;
So when he wakes his thoughts shall dwell
With her he loved, and loved so well.”