Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/65

Put on the garb of mourning. Sad and lone
Are they who nursed thy virtues, and beheld
Their bright expansion through each ripening year.
To them the sacred name of daughter blent
All images of comforter and friend,
The fire-side charmer, and the nurse of pain,
Eyes to the blind, and, to the weary, wings.
What shall console their sorrow, when young morn
Upriseth in its beauty, but no smile
Of filial love doth mark it?—or when eve
Sinks down in silence, and that tuneful tone,
So long the treasure of their listening heart,
Uttereth no music?
                                 Ah!—so frail are we—
So like the brief ephemeron that wheels
Its momentary round, we scarce can weep
Our own bereavements, ere we haste to share
The clay with those we mourn. A narrow point
Divides our grief-sob from our pang of death;
Down to the mouldering multitude we go,
And all our anxious thoughts, our fevered hopes,
The sorrowing burdens of our pilgrimage
In deep oblivion rest. Then let the woes
And joys of earth be to the deathless soul
Like the swept dew-drop from the eagle's wing
When waking in his strength, he sunward soars.