Yet why so soon from earth wouldst thou depart?
Can there, in heav’n itself, be aught more sweet
Than kisses lavished by thy mother’s lips
While rocking thee at eve upon her knees?”
“But God a deaf ear turned; the flower unclosed.
… An angel, clad in golden rays,
One eve, they say, gathered the fragile rose,
And with her took his upward flight to heaven.”
[187] “What sky was ever worth the sky of our birthplace?—the roof, the cherished nest, the home, dear to us when quite little, before we knew anything, and which nothing afar off can ever make us forget?”