The Mourner Answered
Amid the twilight’s gathering gloom,
She knelt beside her babe’s new tomb.
“My child,” she sigh’d, “did heaven not know
How deep and dread would be my woe?
For this did nature give thee birth,
For this,—to bury thee?—O God!”
She groan’d, then started. Earth to earth,
Her lips had kiss’d the common sod.
“Amid life’s flowers that fade and fall,
What need to pluck a bud so small?
With ripen’d harvests full supplied,
What need had heaven of thee?” she cried;
Then mark’d the flowers that, while she stoop’d,
E’en yet made sweet her last-brought wreath:
Those full-blown all had dropt or droop’d;
The buds alone bloom’d bright beneath.
“Why leave, O God,” was then her moan,
“My widow’d soul still more alone?
Why wrest from life the last thing dear?
What harm that love should linger here?”
And lo, the neighboring spire above
Rang forth its evening call to prayer;
And music fill’d from lips of love
The House of God whose door was there.