Classic Poem

List! the bell-Sprite stuns my ears
Slowly calling for a maid;
List! each worm with trembling hears
And stops for joy his dreadful trade.
For nine times the death-bell's Sprite
Sullen for the Virgin cried
And they say at dead of night
Before its time the taper died.
Mie love is dedde
Gone to her deathbedde,
Al under the wyllowe tree.

When friends around her death-bed hung
To feed life's ebbing flood awhile,
The fell disease had chained her tongue
Yet still she gave--she gave--a smile.

So have we marked yon lake at Eve
When aye of Love we took our fill
With smiles the smallest rill receive
Though mute--it smiled--it dimpled still.
But now she is dead
And laid in her grave,
For ever to remain.

Low-mouldering does that eyebrow lie
Which I, lovelorn, must view no more,
Thrown o'er her soft dissolving eye
Thrown like a bridge all ivied o'er.
The Loves and Pleasures thence shall lean
No more like boys in smiling row,
To watch the God who bathed half-seen
In the blue crystal flood below.

Sweet when the red rose blossoms wild
Where hedge-rows bathed with may-morn dew
And flocks which never mark defiled
At rest within are sweet to view.

Her lips with sweeter fragrance glowed
And lovelier tenants did enclose
And from them sweeter music flowed
Than may-morn hedgerow ever knows.

Death like a Rock his shade has cast
Black o'er the chill vale of my days;
I view his lowering form aghast
Still as I tread through shadowy maze.

Maids yet unborn in secret there
Of Death forewarned shall pour the tear;
And children ere they lisp a prayer
Shall learn thy deathbed to revere.

And should some boy wild in the race
On thy green grave unweeting start,
Strange fear shall fly across his face
And home he goes with haunted heart.

And if a scattered flower be there,
Oft as they gather round thy sods
That flower the wandering group shall spare
And think it is a flower of God's.