AH, mother! canst thou feel her? . . . spring has come!
Birds sing, brooks murmur, woods no more are dumb;
And for each grief that vexed thine earthly hour,
Nature has kissed thy grave! and lo! . . . a flower.
Here wails no nightingale against her thorn,
But like the incarnate soul of May-flushed morn,
The mocking-bird above thy splendor sings,
With rapturous threat, and upraised quivering wings;
Half drowsed between brief glooms and mellowed gleams,
The sun smiles gently, like a god in dreams;
His sacred light across thy place of rest,
Steals with the softness of a hand that blessed!
Thro' magic ministers of spring-tide grace,
Thy grave transfigured lifts a radiant face,
O'er which elusive golden shadows run,
A waft of wind-wrought dimples in the sun;
Ah! if thy soul, that loved all beauty here,
May yet look earthward front her holier sphere,
'Twill joy to mark, from even those heights august,
In what a mantle Nature wraps thy dust.
And still the brown bird rears his poet-head,
And pours his matchless music o'er the dead,
Till touched and wakened by the marvellous flow,
I seem to hear a thrilled heart throb below!
