“Come, lay thine hand upon her, and she shall live.”
_Matthew 9th and 18th._
Death cometh to the chamber of the sick.
The ruler's daughter, like the peasant's child,
Grows pale as marble. Hark, that hollow moan
Which none may help, and then, the last, faint breath
Subsiding with a shudder!
The loud wail
Bespeaks an idol fallen from the shrine
Of a fond parent's heart. A wither'd flower
Is there, oh mother, where thy proudest hope
Solac'd itself with garlands, and beheld
New buddings every morn. Father, 'tis o'er!
That voice is silent, which had been thy harp,
Quickening thy footstep nightly toward thy home,
Mingling, perchance, an echo all too deep
Even with the temple-worship, when the soul
Should deal with God alone.
What stranger-step
Breaketh the trance of grief? Whose radiant brow
In meekness, and in majesty doth bend
Beside the bed of death?
“She doth but _sleep_,
The damsel is _not dead_.”
A smother'd hiss
Contemptuous rises from the wondering band
Who beat the breast and raise the licens'd wail
Of Judah's mourning.
Look upon the dead!
Heaves not the winding-sheet? Those trembling lids—
What peers between their fringes, like the hue
Of dewy violet? The blanch'd lips dispart,
And what a quivering, long-drawn sigh restores
Their rose-leaf beauty! Lo, the clay-cold hand
Graspeth the Master's, and with sudden spring
That shrouded sleeper, like a timid fawn,
Hides in her mother's bosom!
Faith's strong root
Was in the parent's spirit, and its boon
How beautiful!
O mother, who dost gaze
Upon thy daughter, in that deeper sleep
Which threats the soul's salvation, breathe her name
To that Redeemer's ear, both when she smiles
In all her glowing beauty on the morn,
And when, at night, her clustering tresses sweep,
Her downy pillow, in the trance of dreams,
Or when at pleasure's beckoning she goes forth,
Or to the meshes of an earthly love
Yields her young heart! Be eloquent for her!
Take no denial, till that gracious hand
Which rais'd the ruler's dead, give life to her—
That better life, whose wings surmount the tomb!