ON THE DEATH OF MRS. HOLLAND
Carve no stone above her head,
Rather let her praise be read
In the shining eyes of youth,
Taught by her to gaze at Truth;
Let her honour be approved
In the deeds of those she loved,
And each life inspired by her
Be her worthy chronicler.
Never soul more chastely wise
Watched the world through deeper eyes;
Hardly shall the future tell
What the influence of her spell;
How her speech's virgin gold
Took the grace of antique mould;
How her heart like altar fire
Burned with flame of high desire ;
How divine Philosophy,
Handmaid of the Lord, stood nigh
Prompting her the Truths that wrought
In her every look and thought-
All has fled; no written scroll
Holds the story of her Soul;
In Time's archives is set forth
No escutcheon of her worth,—
Naught remains save memory!
Nay, such sweetness cannot die,
Though her name be never set
In Fame's tarnished Coronet.
As within a garden green
Shall that dearest name be seen,
Showing as in lilies writ,
And with roses framing it.
We who hung upon her words
Caught the throb of heavenly chords,
Touching harmonies of earth
Into a diviner birth;
Felt the Stoics rigid School
Soften into Christian rule;
Learnt what hidden virtue lies
In the life which fools despise ;
Longed to play the nobler part
With the right chivalric heart;
Honeyed lore of poet and sage,
Simples of the golden age—
These, as into sweets distilled,
All her days with fragrance filled;
These, as garlands wreathed and fair,
Guard her solemn sepulchre.
All Love's herald could proclaim
Lies within her twofold name,
Mary, hers, whose home was blest
By the living Lord as guest;
Sibyl, her majestic eyes
Rapt in lofty mysteries,
But, if childhood met her sight,
Melted into loving light.
Precious as her counsel's store,
Yet her comforting was more;
When she stood by misery
With divining sympathy,
When her every grace and power
Found in Love its crowning dower.
Where the hallowed sunshine fills
That lone vale 'mid Kentish hills,
Where her stainless child has rest
'Neath her native earth's kind breast,
Let her sleep, while April rain
Calls the blossoms forth again,
While the nightingales rejoice,
And the wild bees' murmurous voice
Hums the sombre trees among,
Like an echo of old song.
While the fading leaves shall fall
To one lonely thrush's call,
While the snow shall drift and pass
Like a shadow on life's glass,
While the world shall onward roll
Nearer its mysterious goal.
Strew with violets dim the sod,
Leave her Epitaph with God.
'Twas at this season, year by year,
The singer who lies songless here
Was wont to woo a less austere,
Less deep repose,
Where Rotha to Winandermere
Unresting flows,—
Flows through a land where torrents call
To far-off torrents as they fall,
And mountains in their cloudy pall
Keep ghostly state,
And Nature makes majestical
Man's lowliest fate.
There, 'mid the August glow, still came
He of the twice illustrious name,
The loud impertinence of fame
Not loth to flee
Not loth with brooks and fells to claim
Fraternity.
Linked with his happy youthful lot,
Is Loughrigg, then, at last forgot?
Nor silent peak nor dalesman's cot
Looks on his grave.
Lulled by the Thames he sleeps, and not
By Rotha's wave.
'Tis fittest thus! for though with skill
He sang of beck and tarn and ghyll,
The deep, authentic mountain-thrill
Ne'er shook his page!
Somewhat of worldling mingled still
With bard and sage.
And 'twere less meet for him to lie
Guarded by summits lone and high
That traffic with the eternal sky
And hear, unawed,
The everlasting fingers ply
The loom of God,
Than in this hamlet of the plain
A less sublime repose to gain,
Where Nature, genial and urbane,
To man defers,
Yielding to us the right to reign,
Which yet is hers.
And nigh to where his bones abide,
The Thames with its unruffled tide
Seems like his genius typified-
Its strength, its grace,
Its lucid gleam, its sober pride,
Its tranquil face.
But ah! not his the eventual fate
Which doth the journeying wave await— Doomed to resign its limpid state
And quickly grow
Turbid as passion, dark as hate,
And wide as woe.
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