"The Requiem" by George Copway
Yet crimson with the recent slaughter,
Came slowly, beautifully on;
And when its last faint hues were gone,
Shadowed in the embrace of night,
The moon and stars looked down as bright
As though no scenes of carnage lay
Where now their beams so sweetly stray.
Chance led at this delightful hour
A band of maidens to the bower
Where ME-ME and her lover parted
The night before so broken hearted;
And there upon a mossy bed
Lay ME-ME, silent, cold, and dead.
With the last look on lover cast,
Her gentle spirit sweetly passed,—
And now she lay in cold death sleeping,
Their watch, the wild flowers o'er her keeping,
And, as they waved with the soft sigh
Of the night zephyrs passing by,
Wept dewy tears o'er one so fair,
Laying like blighted rose-bud there,
And, poured the fragrance of their breath
To hallow such a tristful death.
When first beheld, the maidens deemed
'Mid flowers and moonbeam's light she dreamed,
But when they gathered near and felt,
As by her side they fondly knelt,
That death's rude fingers had impressed
Their icy touch upon her breast,
Stilling each throb of bliss or pain
Beyond the power to beat again,—
A wailing, low, like sighing tone
Of winds when through the trees they moan,
While all around beside was hushed,
From their full bosoms sadly gushed.
"Heart of our hearts,—farewell, farewell,"—
Thus rose the dirge's plaintive swell,—
"Thou wast the sunbeam, spirit given,
But softened like the light of even,
Within our darkened bosoms stealing,
That kissed the buds of happy feeling,
And in the fragrant breath and hue
Of sweetest love to flowers drew.
O, what shall keep that hue so fair,—
O, what shall keep that fragrance there,—
Their warmth, and light, with thee withdrawn,
Their hue is fled, their fragrance gone.
We withered where our sister fell,—
Heart of our hearts,—farewell, farewell."
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Ere the sad tones had left the ear,
An airy spirit hovering near,
Caught up again the lingering strains,
And in such music as enchains
The raptured heart in childhood's dreams,
When in some fairy land it deems
'Mid bright etherial forms, it dwells,
The requiem around them swells.
"There's a bower prepared in the land of the blest,
Where the young, and the pure, and the lovely shall rest,
Who have left the sad earth, where the tempests that rushed
O'er their sensitive bosoms, forever are hushed.
O, the heart of the dead beat too warmly for earth,
Like a bird in the far sunny south that had birth,
But which wandered where winds from the northern sky passed,
Where it sung one sweet strain, then sank in the blast.
So the soul that once dwelt in that fair form of clay,
Over which you now weep, that it thus passed away,
Like that bird hovered near you, then went to its rest
In the sweet spirit home, in the land of tho west.
Weep not that her spirit thus early hath fled,—
That spirit still lives, though the body be dead;—
It lives where its joys pass no more with a sigh,—
It lives where its happiness never shall die."