Sung at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, There's a hush of death about me, S. C. 1867. And a whisper, "He is gone!" ISAAC WATTS. INSIGNIFICANT EXISTENCE. THERE are a number of us creep Into this world, to eat and sleep; And know no reason why we're born, But only to consume the corn, Heaven deepening within heaven, like the skies THE LAST FLOWERS. Of autumn nights without a shadow Dost thou remember that autumnal stained, I stood as one whom some strange dream enthralls: For, far away, in some lost life divine, Some land which every glorious dream recalls, A spirit looked on me with eyes like thine. E'en now, though death has veiled their starry light, And closed their lids in his relentless night As some strange dream, remembered in a dream, Again I see in sleep their tender beam; Unfading hopes their cloudless azure fill, Heaven deepening within heaven, serene and still. II. If thy sad heart, pining for human love, In its earth solitude grew dark with fear, Lest the high sun of heaven' itseif should prove Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere Wherein thy spirit wandered - if the flowers That pressed around thy feet seemed but to bloom In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours, When all who loved had left thee to thy doom! Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail To lift its burden of remorseful pain, My soul shall meet thee, and its heaven forego Till God's great love on both, one hope, one Heaven, bestow. day When by the Seekonk's lovely wave we stood, And marked the languor of repose that lay, Softer than sleep, on valley, wave, and wood? |