Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
How prone we are to hide and hoard
Each little treasure time has stored,
To tell of happy hours! We lay aside with tender care
A tattered book, a lock of hair,
A bunch of faded flowers.
When death has led with silent hand
Our darlings to the "Silent Land,"
Awhile we sit bereft; But time goes on; anon we rise,
Our dead are buried from our eyes,
We gather what is left.
The books they loved, the songs they sang,
The little flute whose music rang
So cheerily of old; The pictures we had watched them paint,
The last plucked flower, with odor faint,
That fell from fingers cold.
We smooth and fold with reverent care
The robes they living used to wear;
And painful pulses stir As o'er the relics of our dead,
With bitter rain of tears, we spread
Pale purple lavender.
And when we come in after years,
With only tender April tears
On cheeks once white with care, To look on treasures put away
Despairing on that far-off day,
A subtile scent is there.
Dew-wet and fresh we gather them,
These fragrant flowers; now every stem
Is bare of all its bloom: Tear-wet and sweet we strewed them here
To lend our relics, sacred, dear,
Their beautiful perfume.
The scent abides on book and lute,
On curl and flower, and with its mute
But eloquent appeal It wins from us a deeper sob For our lost dead, a sharper throb
Than we are wont to feel.