Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.
By A Funeral PieceHannah F. Gould (17891865)
L
From the beauteous form it veileth—
Nor ask, as the offerings of sorrow fall,
Who ’t is that the mourner waileth!
With the burial gloom surrounding.—
A name so cherish’d we must not hear
While her funeral bell is sounding.
Their loveliest still to number!—
Ye will find her not, for ’t is her we bear
In the mansion of death to slumber.
Of light, that awhile was given
To brighten the earth; but hath past away,
All pure to its source in heaven.
It never was form’d for aching—
For, when by grief it was rudely wrung
It finish’d at once by breaking.
From the scenes she adorn’d is banish’d:
She hath snapt from the stem in her morning bloom,
Like a vision of beauty vanish’d!
We watch’d with sorrowing o’er her,
Till the soul shone forth with her pinions spread
For a glorious world before her.
And mute we stood around her,
As the spirit escaped with a mighty power
From the mortal cord that bound her.
Its painful conflict over;
And we heard a voice pronounce, “Be still,
And know I
This sacred dust’s protection;
But they who trust, shall find in me
The life and the resurrection!”