The living turn from my fond embrace,
As if no love were needed;
The tears I wept on thy young dead face
Were never more unheeded
Than my wild prayer for peace unwon—
One pure affection only,
One faithful heart to lean upon,
When life is sad and lonely.
The low grassy roof, my glorious dead,
Is bright with the buttercup’s blossom,
And the night-blooming roses burn dimly and red
On the green sod that covers thy bosom.
Thy pale hands are folded, oh beautiful saint,
Like lily-buds chilly and dew-wet,
And the smile on thy lip is as solemn and faint
As the beams of a norland sunset.
The angel that won thee a long time ago
To the shore of the glorious immortals,
In the sphere of the starland shall wed us, I know,
When I pass through the beautiful portals.
[The Midnight Chime.]
Suggested by the tolling of the bell on the sash factory in Port Deposit on a stormy night in January, 1856.
The rain is the loudest and wildest
Of rains that ever fell;
And the winds like an army of chanters
Through the desolate pine-woods swell,
And hark! through the shout of the tempest,
The sound of the midnight bell.
Now close on the storm it rises,
Now sadly it sinks with a moan—
Like a human heart in its anguish,
Crushing a fruitless groan—
Like a soul that goes wailing and pining,
Thro’ the motherless world, alone.
Is it hung in an ancient turret?
Is it swung by a mortal hand?
Is it chiming in woe or gladness,
Its symphonies sweet and grand?
Is it rung for a shadowy sorrow,
In the shadowy phantom land?