Page:Felicia Hemans in The Forget Me Not 1829.pdf/2



Thus lay The gentle babes, thus girdling one another Within their alabaster innocent arms. Shakspeare.

images of sleep! Hallow'd, and soft, and deep! On whose calm lids the dreamy quiet lies, Like moonlight on shut bells Of flowers in mossy dells, Fill'd with the hush of night and summer skies;

How many hearts have felt Your silent beauty melt Their strength to gushing tenderness away! How many sudden tears, From depths of buried years All freshly bursting, have confess'd your sway!

How many eyes will shed Still, o'er your marble bed, Such drops, from Memory's troubled fountains wrung! While Hope hath blights to bear, While Love breathes mortal air, While roses perish ere to glory sprung.

Yet, from a voiceless home, If some sad mother come To bend and linger o'er your lovely rest; As o'er the cheek's warm glow, And the soft breathings low Of babes, that grew and faded on her breast;

If then the dovelike tone Of those faint murmurs gone, O'er her sick sense too piercingly return; If for the soft bright hair, And brow and bosom fair, And life, now dust, her soul too deeply yearn;

O gentlest forms! entwin'd        Like tendrils, which the wind May wave, so clasp'd, but never can unlink; Send from your calm profound A still small voice, a sound Of hope, forbidding that lone heart to sink.

By all the pure, meek mind In your pale beauty shrined, By childhood's love—too bright a bloom to die! O'er her worn spirit shed, O fairest, holiest Dead! The Faith, Trust, Light, of Immortality!