V. FROM MRS. GRAHAM.

Your love lacks joy, your letter says.

Yes; love requires the focal space

Of recollection or of hope,

E'er it can measure its own scope.

Too soon, too soon comes Death to show

We love more deeply than we know!

The rain, that fell upon the height

Too gently to be call'd delight,

Within the dark vale reappears

As a wild cataract of tears;

And love in life should strive to see

Sometimes what love in death would be!

Easier to love, we so should find.

It is than to be just and kind.

She's gone: shut close the coffin-lid:

What distance for another did

That death has done for her! The good

Once gazed upon with heedless mood,

Now fills with tears the famish'd eye,

And turns all else to vanity.

‘ Tis sad to see, with death between,

The good we have pass'd and have not seen!

How strange appear the words of all!

The looks of those that live appal.

They are the ghosts, and check the breath:

There's no reality but death,

And hunger for some signal given

That we shall have our own in heaven.

But this the God of love lets be

A horrible uncertainty.

How great her smallest virtue seems,

How small her greatest fault! Ill dreams

Were those that foil'd with loftier grace

The homely kindness of her face.

‘ Twas here she sat and work'd, and there

She comb'd and kiss'd the children's hair;

Or, with one baby at her breast,

Another taught, or hush'd to rest.

Praise does the heart no more refuse

To the chief loveliness of use.

Her humblest good is hence most high

In the heavens of fond memory;

And Love says Amen to the word,

A prudent wife is from the Lord.

Her worst gown's kept, (‘ tis now the best,

As that in which she oftenest dress'd,)

For memory's sake more precious grown

Than she herself was for her own.

Poor child! Foolish it seem'd to fly

To sobs instead of dignity,

When she was hurt. Now, none than all,

Heart-rending and angelical

That ignorance of what to do,

Bewilder'd still by wrong from you:

For what man ever yet had grace

Ne'er to abuse his power and place?

No magic of her voice or smile

Suddenly raised a fairy isle,

But fondness for her underwent

An unregarded increment,

Like that which lifts, through centuries,

The coral-reef within the seas,

Till, lo! the land where was the wave.

Alas!‘ tis everywhere her grave.