Sorrow and the Flowers. - A Memorial Wreath to C. F.
by Abram Joseph Ryan

Sorrow:
A garland for a grave! Fair flowers that bloom,
And only bloom to fade as fast away,
We twine your leaflets 'round our Claudia's tomb,
And with your dying beauty crown her clay.
Ye are the tender types of life's decay;
Your beauty, and your love-enfragranced breath,
From out the hand of June, or heart of May,
Fair flowers! tell less of life and more of death.
My name is Sorrow. I have knelt at graves,
All o'er the weary world for weary years;
I kneel there still, and still my anguish laves
The sleeping dust with moaning streams of tears.
And yet, the while I garland graves as now,
I bring fair wreaths to deck the place of woe;
Whilst joy is crowning many a living brow,
I crown the poor, frail dust that sleeps below.
She was a flower -- fresh, fair and pure, and frail;
A lily in life's morning. God is sweet;
He reached His hand, there rose a mother's wail;
Her lily drooped: 'tis blooming at His feet.
Where are the flowers to crown the faded flower?
I want a garland for another grave;
And who will bring them from the dell and bower,
To crown what God hath taken, with what heaven gave?
As though ye heard my voice, ye heed my will;
Ye come with fairest flowers: give them to me,
To crown our Claudia. Love leads memory still,
To prove at graves love's immortality.
White Rose:
Her grave is not a grave; it is a shrine,
Where innocence reposes,
Bright over which God's stars must love to shine,
And where, when Winter closes,
Fair Spring shall come, and in her garland twine,
Just like this hand of mine,
The whitest of white roses.
Laurel:
I found it on a mountain slope,
The sunlight on its face;
It caught from clouds a smile of hope
That brightened all the place.
They wreathe with it the warrior's brow,
And crown the chieftain's head;
But the laurel's leaves love best to grace
The garland of the dead.
Wild Flower:
I would not live in a garden,
But far from the haunts of men;
Nature herself was my warden,
I lived in a lone little glen.
A wild flower out of the wildwood,
Too wild for even a name;
As strange and as simple as childhood,
And wayward, yet sweet all the same.
Willow Branch:
To sorrow's own sweet crown,
With simple grace,
The weeping-willow bends her branches down
Just like a mother's arm,
To shield from harm,
The dead within their resting place.
Lily:
The angel flower of all the flowers:
Its sister flowers,
In all the bowers
Worship the lily, for it brings,
Wherever it blooms,
On shrines or tombs,
A dream surpassing earthly sense
Of heaven's own stainless innocence.
Violet Leaves:
It is too late for violets,
I only bring their leaves,
I looked in vain for mignonettes
To grace the crown grief weaves;
For queenly May, upon her way,
Robs half the bowers
Of all their flowers,
And leaves but leaves to June.
Ah! beauty fades so soon;
And the valley grows lonely in spite of the sun,
For flowerets are fading fast, one by one.
Leaves for a grave, leaves for a garland,
Leaves for a little flower, gone to the far-land.
Forget-Me-Not:
"Forget-me-not!" The sad words strangely quiver
On lips, like shadows falling on a river,
Flowing away,
By night, by day,
Flowing away forever.
The mountain whence the river springs
Murmurs to it, "forget me not;"
The little stream runs on and sings
On to the sea, and every spot
It passes by
Breathes forth a sigh,
"Forget me not!" "forget me not!"
A Garland:
I bring this for her mother; ah, who knows
The lonely deeps within a mother's heart?
Beneath the wildest wave of woe that flows
Above, around her, when her children part,
There is a sorrow, silent, dark, and lone;
It sheds no tears, it never maketh moan.
Whene'er a child dies from a mother's arms,
A grave is dug within the mother's heart:
She watches it alone; no words of art
Can tell the story of her vigils there.
This garland fading even while 'tis fair,
It is a mother's memory of a grave,
When God hath taken her whom heaven gave.
Sorrow:
Farewell! I go to crown the dead;
Yet ye have crowned yourselves to-day,
For they whose hearts so faithful love
The lonely grave -- the very clay;
They crown themselves with richer gems
Than flash in royal diadems.