EUDORA.
I. Like a white blossom in a shady place, Upon her couch the pure Eudora lay, Lovely in death; and on her comely face,— So soon to make acquaintance with the clay,— Fell faint the languid light of evening gray, Flecked with the pea-blooms at the window case.
II. Deep sobbings echoed in the outer hall, And all things in the chamber seemed to mourn;— The pictures, which she loved, along the wall, The cherubs on the frescoed ceiling, lorn, Looked downward on the face so wan and worn, And sad each wavy curtain’s foamy fall.
III. Born with the last, the long laborious sigh, Her soul, expanding upward, wondrous fair, Lingered regretful, loath to seek the sky, Loath to forsake its sister-semblance there; And, hovering in the chamber’s dusky air, Gazed on its blank abode with piteous eye.
IV. There, too, glad-winged, impatient to depart,— Betwixt the fragrant window and the maid,— The Angel-Guardian of her gentle heart, And now the escort of her trembling shade, Pointed to where the day-beams never fade, Pointed their path on the celestial chart.
V. Then spoke Eudora’s Soul: “My comely shell, Bleached with a silent grief which we alone, Which only thou and I have known too well, In cities and in solitudes have known,— Poor pallid tenement! no more my own, I grieve, and yet rejoice to say farewell!
VI. “Rejoice that all thine agony is past, That never more on thee, my down-blown tent, Will beat wild sorrow’s suffocating blast;— And grieve that thou, with whom some years I’ve spent, Albeit in latter days with discontent, Must now into the nether night be cast.