Poems (Cook)/The Dead

by Eliza Cook

THE DEAD.

When the clear red sun goes down,
 Passing in glory away;
And Night is spreading her twilight frown
 On the open brow of Day;
When the faintest glimmering trace is gone,
 And all of light is fled;
Then, then does Memory, sad and lone,
 Call back the dear ones dead.

When the harp's soul-touching chord
 Is roughly fray'd and torn;
When of all tones the string that poured
 The fullest is outworn;
When it is heard to breathe and break,
 Its latest magic shed;
Then, then will my warm heart bleed and ache,
 And weep for the kind ones dead.

When the elm's rich leaf is seen
 Losing its freshness fast;
And paleness steals on its vivid green,
 As the autumn wind moans past;
When it eddies to the cold damp ground,
 All crush'd beneath the tread;
Then, then may the sigh on my lip be found,
 For I muse on the fair ones dead.

For, like that orb of light,
 That chord, and shining leaf,
Forms were once near, as rare and bright;
 And, oh their stay as brief.
I watch'd them fading—I saw them sink,
 Light, beauty, sweetness fled;
And a type of their being bids me think
 Too fondly of the dead.

The sun will rise again,
 The string may be replaced,
The tree will bloom-but the loved in the tomb
 Leaves the world for ever waste.
Let earth yield all the joys it may,
 Still should I bow my head;
Still would my lonely breathing say,
 Give, give me back the dead!

As the thickest verdure springs
 From the ashes of decay,
And the living ivy closest clings
 To the ruins cold and grey;
So my feelings most intense and deep
 By the shrouded and lost are fed;
So my thoughts will yearn, and my spirit turn,
 To be nurtured by the Dead.