Dark length’ning shadows on the verdant earth,

And men had gather’d to the burial.

Women were there, with hearts of sympathy

For the bereaved; and rosy children too

Gazed up into the mourner’s marble face,

With troubled looks of awe, and wonder’d why

She was alone, and where the lovely boy

Whom they had ever seen beside her—was.

The mother brought her babe, and when it cried,

Alarm’d at her unwonted gravity,