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The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 44, Pages 286 to 288
(286)
STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF MRS. HEMANS.
"The rose—the glorious rose is gone."—Lays of Many Lands.
Bring flowers to crown the cup and lute,—
Bring flowers,—the bride is near;
Bring flowers to soothe the captive's cell,
Bring flowers to strew the bier!
Bring flowers! thus said the lovely song;
And shall they not be brought
To her who linked the offering
With feeling and with thought?
Bring flowers,—the perfumed and the pure,—
Those with the morning dew,
A sigh in every fragrant leaf,
A tear on every hue.
So pure, so sweet thy life has been,
So filling earth and air
With odours and with loveliness,
Till common scenes grew fair.
Thy song around our daily path
Flung beauty born of dreams,
And scattered o'er the actual world
The spirit's sunny gleams.
Mysterious influence, that to earth
Brings down the heaven above,
And fills the universal heart
With universal love.
Such gifts were thine,—as from the block,
The unformed and the cold,
The sculptor calls to breathing life
Some shape of perfect mould,
So thou from common thoughts and things
Didst call a charmed song,
Which on a sweet and swelling tide
Bore the full soul along.
And thou from far and foreign lands
Didst bring back many a tone,
And giving such new music still,
A music of thine own.
