Poems (Whitney)/Epitaph

by Anne Whitney

EPITAPH

 

INSCRIBED TO RICHARD, WHO LOVES NOT THE SUBJECT.

      Here lies,
(Speak softly,) one who dropped away
As a ripe berry from the spray;
She ended nine lives in a day.

Just at the sunset, as a spark
Winked by the firelight, did her bark
Put forth into the unknown dark.

She had no kin to stay her breath;
As lonely traveller hasteneth,
She swam for life the moat of death.

All musings of the fireside born,
All love, all fear of hate and scorn,
The rose of life and its sharp thorn,

These have exhaled; in dumbest show
'Twas willed the curious life should blow,
And, having blossomed, should pass so.

Ah, not unkindly does the grave
Shut out earth's sunlight, if it have
The power to ripen and to save,

But you, O cat of many years,
When the inevitable shears
Cut off your thread of hopes and fears,

Tell us, what hope could love supply?
What page of drear philosophy
Would say thou didst not vainly die?

"As the beast dieth," holy writ
Remorselessly hath worded it,
And so constrains our feeble wit.

Poor beasts! in mild Chaldaic lore,
When shepherds watched on starlit moor,
Your destiny was not so poor.

Great Nature to her open feast
Gave welcome wide, the highest guest
Had common birthright with the least.

To live to die! it could not be;
Birthright was immortality:
Yea, what was born could never die.

Alas, what better faith have we?
What light of heaven shines tenderly
On this dark web of mystery?

What shall we say of what was here?
A thing that held its life as dear
As one of us, in hope and fear.

Dumbly it asked for human care;
A little love, that it might bear
The ills and pains it could not share;

Some patience for misdoings small;
For dulness, ignorance, and all
That made it a dependent thrall

On human kind. Perhaps not dumb,
(Nay, Richard!) in new guise shall come
Into the spirit's older home,

This poor dependent of our hearth,
Linked with old scenes of peace and mirth,
Or cruelty, and pain, and the bleak earth.