Poems (Hornblower)/The Bereaved One

by Jane Elizabeth Roscoe Hornblower

THE BEREAVED ONE.

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In loving thee, I need not fear
 To meet a haughty rival's frown:
There 's hut the grave my rival here,
 Or heaven, which claims thee for its own.

In loving thee, I need not dread
 Unkindness, change, or perfidy;
The love whose hopes are from the dead
 Shall, like themselves, immortal he.

It is more sweet to me by far
 To sit and think upon thy tomb,
Than any living pleasures are,
 In all then- bright and breathing bloom.

And dearer are the silent sighs
 I breathe to thy young virtue's shrine;
More blest the tears that dim my eyes,
 Than all the joys that once were mine.

Thy light of love is on my path,
 Thy voice is in the summer breeze;
And all of beauty, young life hath,
 Is in thine hallowed reveries.

I trace the lines once traced by thee,
 That hand is mouldering, but the thought
Beams through death's cold obscurity,
 With every tenderest feeling fraught.

I fear not the dark voiceless tomb,
 It is the spot that shields thy youth;
And there the guardians of thy doom
 Wait the soft forms of hope and truth.

There sleeps thy perished heart, and there
 My funeral anthem oft shall rise,
The offering of affection's tear,
 Her best and holiest sympathies.

Cold as my hopes, thy silent grave—
 Lone as my fate, that unshared spot—
Where foreign flowers now o'er thee wave
 Entombed by hands that knew thee not.

Yet dost thou live in friendship's tear,
 Still does thy fair example shine,
And fondest hopes embalm thy bier,
 Of those whose lives would be like thine

And though the grave would rival me,
 The worm destroy that perished heart,
Yet e'er I cease to grieve o'er thee,
 Shall life and memory both depart.