Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/37

Rh .

"Oh mother! mother!"—Did that bitter cry

Send a shrill echo through the realm of death?

Look—to the trembling fringes of the eye.

List—the sharp shudder of returning breath,

The spirit's sob! They lay him on her breast;

One long, long kiss on his bright brow she prest;

Even from heaven's gate of bliss she lingereth,

To breathe one blessing o'er his precious head,

And then, her arm unclasps, and she is of the dead.

.

The dead!—the sainted dead!—why should we weep

At the last change their settled features take?

At the calm impress of that holy sleep

Which care and sorrow never more shall break?

Believe we not His word who rends the tomb,

And bids the slumberers from that transient gloom

In their Redeemer's glorious image wake?

Approach we not the same sepulchral bourne,

Swift as the shadow fleets? What time have we to mourn?

.

A little time, thou found'st, O pagan king,—

A little space, to murmur and repine;

Oh, bear a few brief months affliction's sting,

And gaze despondent o'er the billowy brine,