[Suggested by a picture in which a young girl is represented as sleeping, and visited during her slumbers by the spirits of her departed sisters.]
She sleeps!—but not the free and sunny sleep
That lightly on the brow of childhood lies:
Though happy be her rest, and soft, and deep,
Yet, ere it sank upon her shadow’d eyes,
Thoughts of past scenes and kindred graves o’erswept
Her soul’s meek stillness—she had pray’d and wept.
And now in visions to her couch they come,
The early lost—the beautiful—the dead!
That unto her bequeath’d a mournful home,