When winter’s loom of cloud
Weaves robes of snow
To wrap the hills in shroud,
My meditations go
Where shuddering tempests blow
Above a little grave.
When spring’s pale wild-flowers wake
Where sunbeams play,
Must not my full heart break?
Birds, blossoms, come with May,—
Would that, some happy day,
My child could come again.
When air-built cloud-fleets sail
Blue summer’s sky,
And violets exhale
Their fragrant souls and die,
My soul lifts Rachel’s cry,
For, oh! the child is not.
Most mournful time of all
Is when the leaf
Fades, withering to its fall,
Ending its term so brief,
Like him, my joy, my grief,
Lost in the senseless grave.
The new moons come and go,
Stars rise and set,
Time’s healing waters flow
Across my wound, and yet
Grief cannot pay love’s debt;—
Love’s solace is to mourn.