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DIRGE.
Lay her in the gentle earth,
Where the summer maketh mirth;
Where young violets have birth;
Where the lily bendeth.
Lay her there, the lovely one!
With the rose, her funeral stone;
And for tears, such showers alone
As the rain of April lendeth.
From the midnight’s quiet hour
Will come dews of holy power,
O’er the sweetest human flower
That was ever loved.
But she was too fair and dear
For our troubled pathway here;
Heaven, that was her natural sphere,
Has its own removed.
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