LVII.
But the true parting came! I look’d my last
On the sad beauty of that slumbering face:
How could I think the lovely spirit pass’d
Which there had left so tenderly its trace?
Yet a dim awfulness was on the brow—
No! not like sleep to look upon art thou,
Death, Death! She lay, a thing for earth’s embrace,
To cover with spring-wreaths. For earth’s?—the wave
That gives the bier no flowers, makes moan above her grave!