Then an aged man with his locks of snow,
Press’d an earnest kiss on her fever’d brow;
She had knelt with him oft at the hour of prayer,
In her childhood’s home, when the world seem’d fair,
And a thousand flow’rs on her path were shed;—
But now, when they all were faded and dead,
And her heart was sad, and her soul most drear,
And death hover’d o’er her, he only was near.
“My child!”—he said—“though none o’er thee may weep,
Fear not, for the angels a vigil shall keep