Ah, me: the cost life's tenderest chords to wake,
With sweet enchantment breaking up the air;
To know each tone will call forth many a tear:
Each tender touch a heart or spirit-ache.
Ah, me: the cost for human hearts to claim
Where God before His perfect seal had set,
Like mortals straying into Heaven unlet,
We perish gazing on celestial flame.
TO CLARA.
'Twas a short decade that thou and I
Walked hand-in-hand through the world together;
When the cruel clouds obscured our sky,
And bitter and bleak was life's daily weather.
But a brave little heart was thine—and so,
Though it might have been lighter had fortune willed it,
It battled, in boundless faith I know,
And just as the sunshine 'gan to grow
The hand of Death reached forth—and chilled it.
The blow was unkind; but Heaven knows best:
I felt that my loss was to thee a blessing;
For I knew, when I laid thee down to rest,
I was giving an angel to angels' caressing:
Thy love to my heart was ever dear,
With thy gentle voice and thy brave endeavour;
Though briefly we wandered together here,
Two souls were cemented with smile and tear,
That, one on earth, will be one for ever.
E. H. R.
DIED NOVEMBER 30TH, 1867.
She came in beauty like the sun,
And flusht with hope each heart and eye,
As roses redden into life
When Summer passes by.
And like the sun she calmly set,
With love's own golden glory crown'd,
In light whose rays for evermore
In mem'ry will abound.