Mary

Three days before my Mary’s death,
We walk’d by Grassmere shore;
“Sweet Lake!” she said with faultering breath,
“I ne’er shall see thee more!”

Then turning round her languid head,
She look’d me in the face;
And whisper’d, “When thy friend is dead,
Remember this lone place.”

Vainly I struggled at a smile,
That did my fears betray;
It seem’d that on our darling isle
Foreboding darkness lay.

My Mary’s words were words of truth;
None now behold the Maid;
Amid the tears of age and youth,
She in her grave was laid.

Long days, long nights, I ween, were past
Ere ceased her funeral knell;
But to the spot I went at last
Where she had breath’d “farewell!”

Methought, I saw the phantom stand
Beside the peaceful wave;
I felt the pressure of her hand—
—Then look’d towards her grave.

Fair, fair beneath the evening sky
The quiet churchyard lay:
The tall pine-grove most solemnly
Hung mute above her clay.

Dearly she loved their arching spread,
Their music wild and sweet,
And, as she wished on her death-bed,
Was buried at their feet.

Around her grave a beauteous fence
Of wild flowers shed their breath,
Smiling like infant innocence
Within the gloom of death.

Such flowers from bank of mountain-brook
At eve we wont to bring,
When every little mossy nook
Betray’d returning Spring.

Oft had I fixed the simple wreath
Upon her virgin breast;
But now such flowers as form’d it, breathe
Around her bed of rest.

Yet all within my silent soul,
As the hush’d air was calm;
The natural tears that slowly stole,
Assuaged my grief like balm.

The air that seem’d so thick and dull
For months unto my eye;
Ah me! how bright and beautiful
It floated on the sky!

A trance of high and solemn bliss
From purest ether came;
’Mid such a heavenly scene as this,
Death is an empty name!

The memory of the past return’d
Like music to my heart,—
It seem’d that causelessly I mourn’d,
When we were told to part.

“God’s mercy, to myself I said,
To both our souls is given—
To me, sojourning on earth’s shade,
To her—a Saint in Heaven!”