Rest in the grave! — but rest is for the weary,
And her slight limbs were hardly girt for toil;
Rest is for lives worn out, deserted, dreary,
Which have no brightness left for death to spoil.
We yearn for rest, when power and passion wasted
Have left to memory nothing but regret:
She sleeps, while life's best pleasures, all untasted,
Had scarce approached her rosy lips as yet.
Her childlike eyes still lacked their crowning sweetness,
Her form was ripening to more perfect grace.
She died, with the pathetic incompleteness
Of beauty's promise on her pallid face.
What undeveloped gifts, what powers untested,
Perchance with her have passed away from earth;
What germs of thought in that young brain arrested
May never grow and quicken and have birth!
She knew not love who might have loved so truly,
Though love-dreams stirred her fancy, faint and fleet;
Her soul's ethereal wings were budding newly,
Her woman's heart had scarce begun to beat.
We drank the sweets of life, we drink the bitter,
And death to us would almost seem a boon;
But why, to her, for whom glad life were fitter,
Should darkness come ere day had reached its noon?
No answer, — save the echo of our weeping
Which from the woodland and the moor is heard,
Where, in the springtime, ruthless stormwinds sweeping
Have slain the unborn flower and new-fledged bird.