Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/163

162 Your greeting smiles were fond and fair, I stretch my arms—ye are not there; I call—ye answer not the strain, Haunt, bower and hearth, I search in vain, Where are ye?—distant echoes drear, And Death's dark caverns answer—here. Thus like the pageant of a dream, This shadowy span of life doth seem, Thus, in the twinkling of an eye The mourner with the mourned shall lie. Land of my birth! a few times more Winter may scathe thy temples hoar, Or Summer, with unsandled foot, Her sickle to thy harvest put; And then, should kind remembrance save One wild-flower garland for my grave, Or from Oblivion's voiceless shore One solitary trace restore, Then let the cherished record be, My hope in heaven, my love to thee.