Thy wife shall wait
Many long days for thee;
And when the gate
Swings on its unused hinges, she,
Opening her dim and grief-contracted eye,
And still forbidding hope to die,
Longing for thee will look;
Till like some lone and gentle summer brook,
That pineth in the summer-heat away
And dies some day,
She waste her mournful life out at her eyes.
Vainly, ah! vainly we deplore
Thy death, departed friend! No more
Shalt thou be seen by us beneath the skies.
The barbed arrow has gone through
Thy heart, and all the blue
Hath faded from thy clay-cold veins, and thou,
With stern and pain-contracted brow,
Like one that wrestled mightily with death,
Art lying there.
Whether above the skies,
Thou at thy death didst soar,
And treadest Heaven's floor
With great joy beaming in thine eyes;
Or buried there
Commeneest an eternal sleep,
And shalt in atoms only rise to the air, -
As thinks despair;—
We bid thee here a last, long, sad adieu!
Rest there, pale sleeper!
Another trophy of the grim old Reaper,
Cut down and withering under unknown skies.
Farewell! our course yet farther westward lies.
Thy grave is deeper than the wolf can go,
And we have driven the wheels above thee, so
That the Indian may not find thy sepulchre.
Farewell! for now the trains begin to stir;
And we with quivering lip,
And lingering and reluctant step,
Must leave thee here, alone. Once more, farewell!