The Death of Saul | Page 8

Her girlish hands a primrose wreath enwove,
With fingers deft, and
eyes with tears bedimmed:
No lovelier face the painter's art e'er
limned,
No poet's thought e'er told of sweeter love
Than that young mother's, as, with tender grace,
She kissed the
chaplet ere she laid it down
Upon a tiny hillock, earthy-brown--
Of
first and only child the resting place.
And then the few stray blossoms that were left
She kissed and
strewed upon the little mound--
Looked lingering back towards the
sacred ground,
As from the shade she bore her heart bereft.
As gentle ripples, from the side we lave
Of placid lake, will reach the
other side,
So, o'er Death's river--silent, dark, and wide--
Blossoms
may bear the kiss that mother gave.
Or, if in fervent faith she deemed it so,
The thought to joyless lives a
pleasure brings,
And who shall tell, where doting fondness clings,

The loss which hearts bereaved can only know?
And who shall doubt that to such love is given,
Borne upward,
clothed in perfume to the sky,
The pow'r to reach, in death's great
mystery,
Lost hearts, and add a bliss to those of Heaven?
Other sad pilgrims came. A mother here
A duteous daughter mourns,
whose days had been
A ceaseless blessing--an oasis green
On life's
enfevered plain: a brooklet clear,
That ran the meadows of glad lives along,
Till, like a stream that
meanders to the sea,
In the dark Ocean of Eternity
Lost was their
source of laughter, light, and song.

And yonder, clothed in darksome silence, grieves
A loving daughter
near a mother's tomb--
Down by the stunted wall in willow-gloom

And shadows thrown by sombre cypress leaves:
And as, in life, the waving kerchief speaks
The words of friends
departing which the heart
Is all too full to utter e're we part
For ever,
so the sorrowing daughter seeks
In thought one recollection more to wave
To one long dead; and asks
in speechless woe
Primrose and snowdrop on the mound below
To
bear love's messages beyond the grave!
And in the golden sunshine children come
With prattling tongue and
winsome, rosy face--
Like blossoms flowering in a lonely place--

And lay their tributes o'er each narrow home
Where lies the helpless beacon of their lives
In darkness
quencht--gone ere their infant thought
Could realise the loss which
Death had wrought--
The stab the stern Destroying Angel gives.
And o'er each silent grave Love's tributes fall--
The primrose, cowslip,
gentle daffodil--
The snow-drop, and the tender daisy--till
God's
acre sleeps beneath a flowery pall.
And now the sun in all its glory came
And lit the world up with a
light divine,
Casting fresh beauty o'er each sacred shrine:
Breathing
on all things an inspiring flame.
As if the God of Light had bade it be,
In sweet reward for pious rite
performed;
As if, with human love and fondness charmed,
The
Lord had smiled with love's benignity.
For not to this old churchyard where I stand
Is audience of the dead,
through flow'rs, confined
A nation's heart--a nation's love--combined,

Make it the sweet observance of the land.

In humble cot--in proud patrician halls,
The Floral Festival fills every
breast;
And o'er the grass, where'er the loved ones rest,
The lowly
flow'r with choice exotic falls.
And as they fall upon the sacred spot,
Sacred to every heart that
strews them there,
They seem to sing in voices low and clear:

"Though gone for evermore--forgotten not!
"Though never more--still evermore--above
"Eternal will their
deathless spirits reign.
"No more until above to meet again:
"Till
then send up sweet messages of love."
So sang the blossoms with their odorous breath--
Or so in fancy sang
they unto me;
"No more--yet evermore, eternally!
"Though lost,
alas! remembered still in death!"
ELEGY
ON THE LATE CRAWSHAY BAILEY, ESQ.,
"THE IRON KING."
PRIZE POEM:
ABERGAVENNY EISTEDDFOD, 1874.
The programme opened with a competition for the best English Elegy
on the late Crawshay Bailey, Esq., for which a prize of 10 pounds was
given, and a bardic chair, value 5 pounds, by Mr. William Lewis. There
were twelve competitors, and each composition was confined to a limit
of 200 lines.
Sadly the sea, by Mynwy's rugged shore,
Moans for the dead in many
a mournful strain.
A voice from hearts bereft cries "Come again;"

But wavelets whisper softly, "Never more!"
The restless winds take up the solemn cry,
As though--an age of

sorrow in each breath--
The words, "O, come again," could call back
Death
From the far-off, unseen Eternity.
"Our dwellings darkened when his life went out:
"We stand in cold
eclipse, for gone the light
"Which made our cottage-homes so warm
and bright;
"And shadows deepen o'er the world without.
"Come back--come back!" Upon the mournful wind
These words fall
weirdly as they float along,
Melting the soul to tears: for lo! the song

Rises from hearts that seek but ne'er will find:
Save one more billow on the sea of graves;
One joyaunt voice the
fewer in life's throng;
One hand the less to help the world along;

One Hero more 'mongst earth's departed Braves.
For who that in life's battle-field could fight
As he has fought, whose
painless victories
Transcended war's heroic chivalries,
Could in his
country's heart claim nobler height?