Classic Poem

O! she was the joy of her father's home —
The light of her mother's eye;
Yet she moulders now in the lonesome grave;
For the pure and good can die.
She was more akin to the land above
Than the tearful earth below;
And there lives not a fairer spirit now
In the bliss she hath wander'd to.

I saw her bud like a precious flower,
From infancy to youth,
As fair and pure as the rosy sky
Of the bright and fragrant south;
And I saw her loved in her father's house,
With a love earth ne'er surpass'd;
And I saw decay, drear, dark, and cold,
O'er her youth its blighting cast.

But O! she murmured not to leave
This earth and the dwellers there,
Her parents loved or her sisters young,
With whom she had knelt in prayer:
But she droop'd with a smile upon her brow,
Which meekly seemed to say,
Why weep ye, mother dear for me?
It is best to be away!

And she would chant the lovesome songs
She had wont in joy to sing;
Their tones doth yet in her mother's ear
With a woeful cadence ring:
And she would kiss the cheek and lip
Of her sisters, loved so well;
And the joys of yon future land of love
To their infant ears would tell.

O! I saw her wither day by day,
And nightly saw her pine;
Yet I could not save — was e'er a lot
So woeful sad as mine?
I saw her grow more beauteous still,
As the day of death came near,
Till my daughter a spotless angel was
Ere she left her dwelling here!

And the last sad glance from her dear dark eye,
On her grieving parents fell;
And she was away to the better land
She had ever loved so well:
And her sisters wept; and her father's eyes
With tears of grief were full:
But they forgot, — while her mother's heart
Remembers her daughter still!

O! I had hoped that her kindly hand
My dying eyes should close;
That upon my grave she would often sit
Where the grass of the churchyard grows;
And when long, long years have pass'd away,
And her hour of death had come,
That her mother's voice in that better land
Should welcome her daughter home!

But I am left in this vale of tears,
And she to the good hath gone,
And my daughter's eye, 'mid her holiness,
My grief is looking on:
And I would weep, for my heart is sore;
But her soul would my sorrow see;
And I dry my tears, and I seek to go,
My Mary, unto thee!